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THE    THEORY 

OF 

ABSTRACT    ETHICS 


CAMBRIDGE   UNIVERSITY   PRESS 

C.   F.  CLAY,  Manager 

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^.tia  Sort;:    G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

JSombnjj,  ffalctitta  anO  JHatiras:    MACMILI.AN  AND  Co.,  Ltd. 

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eroh«o:    THE  MARUZEN-KAnUSHIKI-KAISHA 


A//  rights  reserved 


THE   THEORY 

OF 

ABSTRACT    ETHICS 


by 


THOMAS   WHITTAKER 

Author  of  The  Neo-Platonists 


Cambridge : 

at  the  University  Press 

1916 


Cambrtligr : 

PRINTED   BY  JOHN   CLAY,   M.A. 
AT    THE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS 


YJh\± 


PREFACE 


THE  present  work  is  the  result  of  long  reflections,  but 
was  actually  called  forth  by  Professor  Juvalta's 
Old  and  New  Problem  of  Morality,  to  which  my  attention 
was  drawn  by  Mr  Benn's  review  in  Mind  (January,  1915). 
The  instantaneous  impression  made  by  the  review,  in 
spite  of  the  reviewer's  disagreement  with  the  author, 
was,  "This  is  the  doctrine  of  which  I  was  in  search." 
Though  "awakened  from  dogmatic  slumber"  by  Re- 
nouvier  {Mind  and  the  Critique  Philosophique,  1887),  I 
had  for  long  continued  the  attempt  to  derive  the  ethical 
law  of  justice  from  "ends"  or  "goods."  This  is  of  course 
the  tradition  of  Enghsh  ethics ;  and  my  own  resistance  to 
Renouvier's  Kantianism  was  only  one  expression  of  the 
effort  of  Enghsh  thought  to  avoid  the  "a  priori.''''  The 
a  priori,  however,  in  some  sense,  cannot  be  avoided. 
English  Experientiahsm,  largely  justified  though  it  was 
and  is,  must  inevitably  be  modified  in  the  end  by  the 
Continental  Rationalism  that  found  its  most  powerful 
expression  in  Kant. 

On  this,  I  am  glad  to  find  myself  in  agreement  with 
Mr  Bertrand  Russell,  whose  case  is,  I  think,  similar  to 
my  own.  That  is  to  say,  he  has  been  brought  to  this 
position,  not  by  the  desire  to  find  support,  denied  by 
English  philosophy  in  its  unofficial  tradition,  for  extra- 
philosophical  convictions,  but  by  the  force  of  intellectual 


96881-3 


VI  PREFACE 

necessity.  Still,  having  arrived  at  a  modified  view,  we 
must  "follow  the  argument";  and,  if  a  metaphysical 
doctrine  emerges  that  is  more  in  harmony  with  the  moral 
aspirations  of  mankind,  we  must  not  refuse  to  consider 
it  out  of  a  kind  of  willed  austerity.  There  is,  I  think, 
something  of  this  in  Mr  Russell.  For  my  own  part, 
whether  on  one  side  or  the  other,  I  decline  to  accept  any 
limitations  but  those  of  necessity.  As  I  refuse  to  decide 
for  a  doctrine  simply  on  the  ground  that  it  is  good  for 
us  to  beheve  it,  so  also  I  refuse  to  bar  out  the  considera- 
tion of  it  simply  on  the  ground  that  we  cannot  arrive  at 
scientific  certainty. 

The  acceptance  of  an  element  of  a  priori  law  in  ethics 
has  at  the  present  time  a  very  distinct  practical  bearing. 
If  by  reflective  thought,  without  reference  to  ends  egoistic 
or  altruistic,  we  recognise  in  ourselves  and  others  rights 
which  it  is  ethically  wrong  that  any  force  should  suppress, 
then,  even  in  the  hour  of  a  defeat  supposed  final  in  the 
universe,  the  idea  of  right  would  still  aSirm  itself :  "  Vic- 
trix  causa  dels  placuit,  sed  victa  Catoni."  In  the  words 
with  which  Juvalta  closes  his  treatise:  Liherum  esse 
hominem  est  necesse;  vivere  non  est  necesse.  This  once 
recognised,  we  have  an  ethical  doctrine  that  enables  us 
to  judge  of  pohtical  systems.  For  the  morahst,  States  no 
longer  present  themselves  as  mere  competitive  organisms 
the  value  of  which  is  perhaps  to  be  determined  by  their 
survival  in  evolution.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the 
judgment  of  the  moralist  may  help  to  determine  which 
shall  survive  and  which  shall  perish,  or  that  the  result 
of  historical  evolution  may  ultimately  coincide  with 
the  moral  judgment  of  mankind.  This,  however,  does 
not  afEect   the   moral   question  itself.     Even  ultimately 


PREFACE  Vll 

successful  iniquity  would  none  the  less  be  iniquity.  If  we 
hold  that  wrong  will  not  finally  triumph,  that  belief  springs 
from  a  metaphysical  conviction  subsequent  to  our  ethical 
position,  and  on  which  this  did  not  depend  and  can  never 
come  to  depend  for  its  ethical  validity. 

"  The  primary  and  fundamental  values  of  every  moral 
system,"  to  adopt  Mr  Benn's  statement  of  Professor 
Juvalta's  general  position,  are  "Liberty  and  Justice." 
These,  I  have  always  held,  furnish  the  link  between  ethics 
and  politics.  The  only  change  of  attitude  I  have  to 
indicate  here  is  the  definite  recognition  in  them  of  an 
ethically  a  priori  element.  From  this  point  of  view,  I 
am  not  in  the  least  moved  to  scepticism  by  Mr  Benn's 
objection  that  "there  are  great  systems  of  morality  in 
which  neither  liberty  nor  justice,  as  we  understand  them, 
find  a  place.  They  might  be  sought  for  in  vain  in  a 
recent  manifesto  signed  by  the  representatives  of  German 
art,  intellect  and  religion^."  The  reply  may  very  well  be, 
in  the  words  of  Heraclitus,  "  One  is  ten  thousand  to  me, 
if  he  be  the  best."  Kant  outweighs  them  all;  and  we 
know  what  his  judgment  would  have  been.  The  appeal 
is  not  to  general  consent,  but  to  reflective  thought.  In 
the  fight  of  this,  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should  call 
such  systems  "systems  of  morality"  at  all.  A  code  of 
conduct  adapted  to  promote  efficiently  the  organic  life 
and  expansion  of  an  aggregate,  but  recognising  no  ultimate 
ground  save  a  Collective  Will,  never  seemed  to  me  to 

^  After  writing  this  Preface,  I  heard  with  regret  of  the  death  of 
Mr  Benn  (on  the  16th  of  September,  1915).  To  avoid  any  misunder- 
standing, I  must  add  that  I  do  not  suppose  Mr  Benn  disagreed  with  me 
in  personal  opinion  on  the  actual  question:  the  difiference  that  I  take  to 
be  implied  concerns  the  judgment  we  liave  the  right  to  pronounce  as 
moral  philosophers. 


Vill  PREFACE 

deserve  the  name  of  morality  in  the  proper  sense.  It 
might  easily  be  the  code  of  a  band  of  robbers.  And,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  a  criminal  State  is  not  a  new  thing  in 
history.  Its  punishment  also  will  not  be  a  new  thing. 
Assyria  at  last  became  too  intolerable  for  the  ancient 
East,  as  the  Kingdom  of  Prussia  may  have  become  too 
intolerable  for  the  modern  West. 

Kant,  as  will  be  seen  in  Chapter  VI  of  the  present 
Essay,  has  by  anticipation  discussed  the  actual  case,  and 
has  passed  a  somewhat  lenient  judgment.  Briefly,  it 
amounts  to  this,  that  the  other  nations  are  entitled  to 
secure  themselves  henceforth  by  abolishing  the  institu- 
tions of  the  military  monarchy,  but  not  by  destroying 
the  offending  State.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  this 
judgment,  it  will  not  be  denied  that  it  is  remote  enough 
to  be  dispassionate. 

T.  W. 
November  1915 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

I.  Metaphysical  Preliminaeies 

II.  Separation  of  Ethics  from  Metaphysics 

III.  End  and  Law  in  Ethics 

IV.  The  History  of  Abstract  Ethics 

V.  The  Solution  of  Juvalta    . 

VI.  Abstract  and  Concrete  Ethics  . 

VII.  Metaphysical  Conclusion    . 

Index  ..... 


PAGE 
I 

19 
26 
39 
66 
90 
113 

125 


CHAPTER  I 

METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES 

"That  the  mind  of  man  will  ever  once  for  all  give  up 
metaphysical  inquiries  is  as  little  to  be  expected  as  that 
we  shall  sometime  stop  breathing  altogether  in  order  not 
to  be  always  breathing  impure  air."  So  true  is  this 
assertion  of  Kant^  that,  although  I  regard  the  ethical 
thesis  to  be  set  forth  as  completely  detachable  from  every 
metaphysical  doctrine,  I  find  it  desirable  to  begin  by  a 
general  statement  of  my  metaphysical  position  in  order 
to  leave  no  ambiguity  as  to  any  lurking  assumptions  in 
the  reasoning.  For  although  ethics  has  to  be  constituted 
as  an  independent  doctrine,  there  are  certain  relations  of 
congruity  between  general  positions  regarding  the  founda- 
tions of  ethics  and  of  metaphysics.  A  modification  in 
the  traditionally  empirical  direction  of  English  thought, 
bringing  it  nearer  to  philosophical  rationalism,  is  hkely  to 
be  simultaneous  in  all  the  philosophical  sciences,  and  not 
limited  to  one.  The  modification  of  this  kind  which 
I  agree  with  others  in  thinking  necessary  in  metaphysics 
can  be  very  briefly  stated;  and  the  statement  of  it  will 
have  the  advantage  of  showing  that  the  modification 

1  Prolegomena  zu  einerjeden.  kunftigen  Metaphysik,  die  als  Wissenschaft 
wird  auftreten  konnen,  Anhang. 

W.  E.  1 


2  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

in  ethics  is  not  an  incongruous  patch,  but  organically 
connected  with  a  systematic  readjustment.  Further,  at 
the  end  of  the  present  essay,  I  shall  have  to  point  out 
that  the  ethical  thesis  suggests  a  certain  metaphysical 
conclusion.  For  this  reason,  even  if  there  were  no  other, 
a  brief  statement  of  metaphysical  doctrine  in  so  far  as 
it  is  undetermined  by  ethics  must  come  at  the  beginning. 
Thus  it  will  be  made  clear  exactly  how  the  two  philo- 
sophical doctrines  are  interrelated. 

The  preliminary  statement  of  metaphysical  positions 
can  be  limited  to  theory  of  knowledge.  First,  what  is 
the  meaning  of  the  propositions  we  make  about  existences  ? 
Philosophers  agree  in  recognising  the  existence  of  minds 
as  apparent  unities  to  which  perceptions  are  referred,  and 
of  the  external  world  as  an  apparent  order  scientifically 
calculable  because  it  goes  on  in  accordance  with  what  is 
called  the  "uniformity  of  nature."  But  what  is  the 
method  by  which  minds  are  to  know  about  nature 
and  about  themselves?  The  antithetic  views  are  those 
that  have  taken  for  their  watchwords  Keason  and  Ex- 
perience. The  philosophic  Rationahst,  if  he  is  consistent, 
denies  the  name  of  science  to  the  collections  of  facts  and 
empirical  generalisations  which  in  the  study  of  nature 
precede  deductions  made  from  principles.  Of  course  ex- 
perience is  not  on  this  view  neglected;  it  admittedly 
furnishes  the  problems;  and  admittedly  deductions  from 
principles  are  shown  to  be  wrong  if  the  experience  to 
which  they  refer  does  not  confirm  them.  Still,  reason 
with  its  first  principles  is  predominant;  and  the  sciences 
that  have  in  them  most  of  the  matter  of  experience  and 
least  of  the  form  of  reason  are  in  the  lowest  place. 
RatioDalism  in  this  sense,  in  spite  of  differences  of  relative 


l]  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  3 

stress  in  the  schools  of  antiquity  as  in  later  schools,  may 
be  said  to  have  predominated  in  the  ancient  classical 
conception  of  science.  A  change  that  can  only  be  called 
revolutionary,  both  as  regards  the  sciences  of  nature  and 
man,  was  brought  into  the  notion  of  the  general  method 
to  be  followed  in  seeking  truth,  by  what  has  come  to  be 
known  as  the  Enghsh  school  of  philosophy.  The  hne  of 
thinkers  of  which  the  great  names  are  Bacon,  Hobbes, 
Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume,  Mill  and  Spencer,  placed  a  stress 
on  experience  that  had  never  been  systematically  placed 
before^.  The  general  position  stated  by  Bacon  was  that 
in  all  our  investigations  we  must  above  all  take  care  to 
avoid  importing  the  ideas  of  our  own  minds  into  nature. 
Only  if  we  set  ourselves  to  determine  by  all  devices  what 
happens  in  all  circumstances  may  we  hope  at  last  to 
arrive  at  the  true  law  of  events  and  so  to  rule  nature  by 
obeying.  A  mark  of  "historical  sense"  in  Bacon  is  that 
he  detected  a  certain  resemblance  as  regards  method 
between  the  pre-Hellenic  science  of  the  ancient  East, 
with  its  empiricism  and  its  apphcation  to  works  of  utihty, 
and  the  aim  that  he  was  himself  setting  before  the  modern 
world^.  The  formal  logic  and  deductive  mathematics 
of    the    Greeks,    which    were    the    inspiration    of    their 

1  By  no  one  has  this  been  more  decisively  accepted  than  by  Comte, 
who  in  theory  of  knowledge  is  to  be  classed  wholly  with  the  Experi- 
entialists.  This  in  part  explains  his  especially  powerful  influence  in 
England. 

2  Of.  Comte,  Systeme  de  Politique  Positive,  i.  p.  429;  "Quelque 
eminent  que  soit  enfin  devenu  I'esprit  positif,  il  ne  doit  jamais  oublier 
qu'il  6mana  partout  de  I'activit^  pratique,  substituant  graduellement 
r  etude  des  lois  a  celle  des  causes.  Le  principe  universel  de  1' invariability 
des  relations  naturelles,  sur  iequel  repose  toute  notre  rationality,  est  une 
acquisition  essentiellement  empirique."  The  principles  themselves  of 
mathematics  Comte  held  to  be  empirical  in  basis. 

1—2 


4  METAPHYSICAL  PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

philosophical  rationalism,  he  was  inclined  to  depreciate; 
disagreeing  in  the  latter  point  with  the  Continental 
innovators  who  were  his  contemporaries.  For,  while 
Descartes  was  quite  at  one  with  Bacon  in  depreciating 
the  logic  of  the  mediaeval  schools,  with  its  basis  in  the 
Aristotelian  formal  logic,  his  hope  was  especially  in  the 
application  of  mathematical  method.  For  the  rest  he 
was  far  from  ignoring  experience;  and  his  practical  aims 
had  much  in  common  with  Bacon's,  as  may  be  seen 
by  looking  into  his  prefaces.  He  and  the  other  leading 
Continental  thinkers  had  also  a  perception  that  something 
new  was  coming  from  Enghsh  thought.  Yet  the  funda- 
mental difference  remains.  For  Descartes  as  for  his 
great  successors  Spinoza  and  Leibniz,  the  test  of  truth  is 
finally  clearness  in  the  principles  and  evidence  in  the 
reasonings.  It  was  through  the  Enghsh  mind  that  the 
distinctive  spirit  of  modern  experimental  science  first 
found  expression  in  philosophy. 

We  are  now,  it  seems  to  me,  at  the  end  of  the  period 
characterised  by  this  division  as  regards  method.  It  has 
several  well-marked  stages,  of  which  the  chief  can  easily 
be  passed  in  review.  For  theory  of  knowledge,  con- 
sidered by  itself  and  no  longer  as  a  direct  means  of 
approach  to  actual  science,  Locke's  Essay  concerning 
Human  Understanding  first  definitely  set  the  method  of 
experiential,  or  "historical,"  inquiry  into  what  we  can 
know,  against  Descartes'  statement  of  rational  principles 
in  the  form  of  "innate  ideas."  The  great  importance 
of  this  was  that  it  fixed  for  the  future  the  Enghsh 
method  of  approach  to  philosophical  problems  through 
psychology.  Locke,  however,  partly  misapprehended 
Descartes'   meaning;    for  Descartes  did  not  suppose  his 


l]  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  5 

"innate  ideas"  to  be  principles  that  were  simply  there 
once  for  all  and  could  be  discovered  by  itself  in  every 
human  mind  without  trouble.  It  might  sometimes 
appear  as  if  he  meant  this;  but  he  said  himself  on 
occasion  that  the  innate  ideas  are  only  present  potentially 
and  need  experience  to  develop  them ;  and  Leibniz,  in 
his  Nouveaux  Essais  sur  V Entendement  Humain,  expressly 
defended  the  Cartesian  rationalism  in  that  sense  while 
making  many  concessions  to  Locke.  The  next  important 
phase  on  the  rationahst  side  was  when  Kant  again  restated 
the  position,  with  new  developments  of  the  highest  reach 
philosophically,  in  relation  to  the  deduction  of  the 
ultimate  consequences  of  experientialism  by  Hume  on 
the  basis  of  Locke  and  Locke's  successor  Berkeley.  Ever 
since,  the  whole  question  of  "theory  of  knowledge"  has 
centred  in  Kant.  Kant's  general  position  being  that 
certain  rational  principles,  applied  by  the  mind  to  ex- 
perience, are  necessary  to  constitute  experience  yet  not 
derivable  from  it,  whence  they  are  called  in  his  terminology 
a  priori  or  "transcendental,"  these  terms  have  since 
attached  themselves  to  the  rationalist  view  in  philosophy ; 
all  the  older  forms  of  that  view  having  yielded  to 
Kantianism.  For  in  fact  Kant  incorporated  much  from 
the  thinkers  who  represented  the  opposite  direction. 
His  "transcendental"  principles,  he  explained,  though 
not  derivable  from  experience,  have  no  proper  application 
beyond  its  limits.  Thus  the  next  great  thinkers  on  the 
experientialist  side,  Comte  and  Mill,  always  spoke  of 
him  with  respect,  though  their  work  was  little  affected  by 
him;  and  Spencer,  with  hardly  any  direct  knowledge  of 
Kant,  made  spontaneous  approaches  to  a  theory  of 
knowledge  which  included  a  priori  forms.     At  the  same 


6  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

time,  Kant's  disciples  or  successors  both  in  France 
and  in  England  succeeded  in  keeping  the  problems  he 
had  raised  well  before  the  minds  of  philosophers.  The 
problems  were  never  set  at  rest;  and  yet,  somehow,  we 
find  that  we  are  in  a  new  phase.  The  oppositions  are 
different.  We  are  no  longer  distinctively  Empiricists  or 
Rationalists,  but  perhaps  (for  the  present)  Intellectualists 
or  Vohtionahsts.  And  yet  we  are  not  very  clear  as  to  how 
it  has  come  about,  or  where  exactly  we  stand  as  regards 
the  older  controversies.  For  philosophy,  which  at  least 
aspires  to  be  self-conscious,  this  is  not  a  satisfactory  state 
of  things.  It  seems  desirable,  if  possible,  that  we  should 
know  our  own  minds.  As  I  am  not  acquainted  with  any 
recent  works  that  put  the  points  more  clearly  than 
Mr  Bertrand  Russell's  smaller  and  larger  volumes.  The 
Problems  of  Philosophy  and  Our  Knowledge  of  the  External 
World  as  a  Field  for  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy, 
I  shall  try  to  define  my  own  positions  in  relation  to  his. 
First,  I  perfectly  agree  that  "Logical  knowledge  is 
not  derivable  from  experience  alone,  and  the  empiricist's 
philosophy  can  therefore  not  be  accepted  in  its  entirety^. " 
"  There  are  propositions  known  a  priori,  and  among  them 
are  the  propositions  of  logic  and  pure  mathematics,  as 
well  as  the  fundamental  propositions  of  ethics^."  Soon, 
indeed,  I  come  to  a  difference;  and  this  is  far-reaching, 
being  a  subtlety  that  seems  to  mark  the  beginning  of 
divergence  between  the  complete  ideahsts  and  those  who 
remain  in  some  sense  reahsts.     To  develop  the  difference, 

^  Our  Knowledge  of  the  External  World,  p.  37. 

^  The  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  125.  I  give  the  end  of  the  sentence 
as  well  as  the  rest,  though  it  is  of  course  irrelevant  at  the  present  stage. 
This  also  I  myself  accept,  as  will  be  seen  later. 


l]  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  7 

however,  will  make  clear  the  element  of  underlying 
agreement:  for  it  does  not  affect  the  ratio  between  the 
factors  of  reason  and  experience  in  knowledge. 

My  most  important  difference  on  logic  is  that  I  regard 
the  laws  of  formal  logic  as  laws  of  thought,  not  of  things. 
Here  I  follow  Kant,  who  held  them  to  be  simply  the 
principles  of  "analytic  judgments";  that  is,  judgments 
that  only  make  explicit  what  was  before  implicit,  but  do 
not  add  new  knowledge,  like  the  "synthetic  judgments" 
{a  priori  or  a  posteriori)  of  mathematics  and  natural 
science.  Yet  I  quite  agree  with  Mr  Russell  when  he  points 
out  that  they  are  not  psychological  laws,  that  is,  laws  of 
our  actual  thinking.  "What  is  important,"  Mr  Russell 
says,  "is  not  the  fact  that  we  think  in  accordance  with 
these  laws,  but  the  fact  that  things  behave  in  accordance 
with  them,  the  fact  that  when  we  think  in  accordance 
with  them  we  think  truly'^."  "Thus  the  law  of  con- 
tradiction is  about  things,  and  not  merely  about  thoughts; 
and  although  belief  in  the  law  of  contradiction  is  a  thought, 
the  law  of  contradiction  itself  is  not  a  thought,  but  a  fact 
concerning  the  things  in  the  world.  If  this,  which  we 
beUeve  when  we  believe  the  law  of  contradiction,  were 
not  true  of  the  things  in  the  world,  the  fact  that  we  were 
compelled  to  think  it  true  would  not  save  the  law  of 
contradiction  from  being  false;  and  this  shows  that  the 
law  is  not  a  law  of  thought'^.''''  To  this  I  reply  that 
certainly  the  law  is  not  a  law  of  thought  merely  as 
intellection  (to  use  a  term  suggested  by  Croom  Robertson). 
The  establishment  of  the  law  belongs  to  metaphysics, 
not  to  psychology.     It  is  a  law  of  valid  thought,  not  of 

1  The  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  113. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  138. 


8  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

thought  as  it  is  ascertained  to  take  place.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  a  law  of  analytic  thought  merely,  and  can 
reveal  to  us  nothing  that  was  not  already  contained  in 
some  "  synthetic  judgment,"  a  priori  or  a  posteriori  as  the 
case  may  be.  If  we  have  said  that  a  thing  momentarily 
existed,  we  must  not  deny  that  it  momentarily  existed; 
if  we  have  said  that  it  lasted  such  and  such  a  time, 
similarly  we  must  not  deny  this;  but  by  the  mere  law 
of  contradiction  we  cannot  pass  from  the  assertion  of 
momentary  existence  to  the  denial  that  the  existence 
was  only  for  the  moment.  Yet,  while  it  is  not  a  law  about 
things,  it  may  be  called  a  law  of  valid  thought  about 
things.  What  we  need  in  order  to  make  use  of  it  is  to 
furnish  ourselves  with  some  true  general  assertion  or 
assertions  of  material  import.  Such  assertions,  I  agree 
with  Mr  Russell,  are  to  be  found  in  the  fundamental 
propositions  of  mathematics  and  in  the  law  of  causation. 
These  are,  in  Kantian  language,  "synthetic,"  not  merely 
"analytic." 

Are  they  a  priori,  and,  if  so,  in  what  sense?  About 
the  distinctive  mathematical  judgments,  on  which  the 
existence  of  mathematics  as  a  science  depends,  Kant's 
answer,  I  hold,  is  right:  they  are  synthetic  judgments 
a  priori.  Whatever  may  remain  to  be  said  about  them 
psychologically  is  subordinate  and  does  not  affect  the 
philosophical  position,  that  their  truth  as  laws  is  im- 
mediately evident  in  the  construction  itself  by  which  the 
intellect  brings  them  to  hght.  The  method  of  estab- 
lishing their  validity  is  not,  as  in  the  natural  sciences, 
repetition  of  observations  or  experiments,  but  mental 
constructions  within  the  universal  forms  of  perception, 
viz.,  time  and  space.     For  their  application  to  things, 


l]  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  9 

however,  further  general  propositions  are  necessary. 
Of  these  the  most  typical  is  the  law  of  causation. 

On  the  ground  of  pure  experience  Hume  seemed  to 
have  reduced  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  to  an 
ultimately  irrational  expectation  that  the  future  will 
resemble  the  past.  Hume  himself  of  course  beheved  in 
natural  causation  as  firmly  as  any  one;  witness  his 
classical  statement  of  determinism  ahke  for  mind  and 
things,  and  more  especially  his  "Essay  on  IVIiracles.'* 
Kant  therefore  quite  rightly  treated  his  sceptical  result 
as  a  question,  not  a  solution.  His  answer  in  general 
terms  is  that  anything  we  can  call  "nature"  or  "ex- 
perience" would  not  be  possible  without  a  certain  con- 
stitution of  mind  not  derived  from  experience.  Given 
experiential  data,  and  sequences  of  events  among  them, 
we  "make"  a  particular  sequence,  which  presents  itself 
at  first  as  mere  sequence,  "necessary,"  by  adding  some- 
thing from  the  mind.  That  is  to  say,  we  impose  the 
relation  of  cause  and  effect  on  mere  "subjective"  data  of 
sense;  and  thus  for  what  would  otherwise  be  no  more 
than  a  play  of  dreaming  phantasy  we  substitute  a  system 
that  can  be  called  in  the  proper  sense  nature  as  the  object 
of  science. 

The  unsatisfactory  point  in  this  answer  was  that  it 
seemed  to  make  the  relation  arbitrary  in  a  way  in  which 
it  obviously  is  not.  We  cannot  help  thinking  of  relations 
of  cause  and  effect  as  "given"  in  the  sense  that  the  mind 
has  to  find  them  out  and  conform  to  them.  Is  this 
reconcilable  with  the  vaHdity  of  Kant's  answer,  that  the 
relation  of  cause  and  effect  is  a  "category"  of  the  mind 
imposed  on  the  sensible  data?  Difficult  as  the  recon- 
cihation  may  seem  at  first  sight,  I  think  it  can  be  attained 


10  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

by  a  further  evacuation  of  the  a  priori  forms  of  Kant, — 
but  an  evacuation  that  is  not  destruction. 

We  must  not  suppose  the  mind  equipped  with  a  set 
of  ready-made  forms  which  it  imposes  on  the  flux  of 
feehng.  It  is  not  true  that  we  make  a  particular  sequence, 
which  is  at  first  mere  sequence,  necessary  by  imposing 
a  "category  of  the  understanding,"  and  thus  constitute 
a  particular  relation  of  a  cause  to  an  effect.  But  also, 
it  is  not  true  that  the  order  of  perception  simply  as  given 
imposes  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  on  the  mind. 
In  rational  science,  the  movement  of  thought  is  this. 
The  mind,  having  formed  an  ideal  of  knowledge  by  exercise 
in  logic  and  mathematics — which  need  not  have  gone 
very  far — seeks  to  impose  its  own  ideal  of  necessary 
connexion  on  that  which  it  finds  in  perception.  Already 
in  perception  certain  uniformities  have  been  established 
empirically  which  suggest  the  possibility  of  reahsing  this 
ideal ;  but  most  perception  goes  on  without  any  apparent 
stringency  of  connexion,  as  if  things  could  simply  come 
into  and  go  out  of  existence,  or  as  if,  in  Hume's  phrase, 
anything  could  cause  anything.  To  make  a  truly 
"objective"  nature,  as  Kant  said,  the  mind  has  to  import 
something.  What  it  does  is  to  assert,  and  then  to  seek 
for,  relations  analogous  to  those  of  logical  and  mathe- 
matical necessity.  For  the  logician,  the  "consequent" 
in  a  hypothetical  argument  necessarily  follows  from  the 
"ground."  Then  in  nature  one  event  must  follow  from 
another  with  similar  rigorous  necessity.  And  in  fact, 
not  by  applying  ready-made  forms  that  we  have  tabu- 
lated, but  by  persistently  trying,  with  a  generahsed  ideal 
of  necessity  in  the  mind,  it  is  found  that  nature  can 
more  and  more  be  interpreted  as  a  system  of  necessary 


ij  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  11 

relations.  From  mere  subjective  flux  of  perception,  it 
becomes  "experience"  in  Kant's  sense.  We  at  length 
find  laws  that  are  not  mere  rules,  but  theorems  admitting 
of  no  exception,  as  if  nature  were  logic  and  mathematics 
realised,  to  be  the  only  kind  of  laws  according  to  which 
experience  can  be  coherently  thought. 

But  is  not  the  test,  it  may  be  said  from  the  ex- 
perientialist  side,  simply  verification  by  perception?  We 
begin  with  observation,  we  proceed  by  thought  and 
experiment,  and  finally  we  appeal  to  what  we  find  actually 
goes  on.  The  reply  is  that  this  is  true  in  all  particular 
cases ;  but  that  if  we  take  into  our  view  the  whole  activity 
of  science  at  any  time,  the  verification  is  never  complete; 
and  yet  we  know  that  we  shall  always  hold  to  our  ideal 
of  necessary  connexion  against  any  appearance  of  un- 
certainty or  caprice.  This  is  the  inexpugnable  element  of 
philosophical  rationalism  involved  in  the  scientific  view 
of  nature.  However  evacuated  the  element  of  the 
a  priori  becomes,  it  cannot  be  effaced. 

The  complementary  truth  enforced  by  experientialism 
is  that  only  on  the  condition  of  attending  to  things  and 
events  and  adapting  its  behaviour  to  them  in  the  minutest 
detail,  suppressing  every  disposition  to  dictate  what  the 
particular  connexions  must  be,  can  the  mind  ever  come  to 
understand  them. 

But  what  ultimately  are  these  things  and  events  in 
nature?  Here  the  answers  of  philosophers  seem  to  have 
depended  little  on  the  degree  in  which  their  theory 
of  knowledge  was  experiential  or  rationalist.  Kant's 
general  answer  did  not  differ  from  that  of  the  English; 
that  the  sciences  of  nature  deal  with  phenomena,  that 
is  to  say,  appearances  for  minds.     Yet,  though  none  but 


12  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

this  "idealist"  view  was  consistent  Avith  his  positions,  he 
took  fright  at  the  term  when  it  was  applied  to  him,  thinking 
he  was  being  accused  of  the  absurdities  popularly  at- 
tributed to  Berkeley.  Of  Berkeley  it  is  clear  from  his 
references  that  he  had  no  knowledge  whatever;  and  of 
Hume,  while  he  knew  and  had  carefully  studied  the 
Inquiry  and  the  Dialogues  concerning  Natural  Religion,  it 
is  evident  that  he  had  not  read  the  more  radically 
sceptical  Treatise  of  Human  Nature.  Thus  the  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason  did  not  start  at  all  points  from  the  most 
advanced  critical  positions  already  attained;  and  in  the 
second  edition,  through  fear  of  having  his  "  Transcendental 
ideahsm"  classed  with  the  ideahsm  of  Berkeley,  he 
introduced  new  complication  and  obscurity  into  a  work 
already  sufficiently  difficult;  bringing  back  apparently 
the  confused  notion  of  a  material  object  that  is  ultimately 
non-phenomenal.  In  reality  this,  as  a  clear-headed 
successor  like  Schopenhauer  saw,  is  as  inconsistent  with 
the  Kantian  criticism  of  knowledge  as  Berkeley  had 
already  shown  it  to  be  with  the  subjectively  critical  point 
of  view  common  to  Descartes  and  Locke. 

When  I  speak  of  the  confused  notion  of  a  non- 
phenomenal  material  object,  I  do  not  mean  the  "thing- 
in-itself"  or  "things-in-themselves."  This,  whether  we 
continue  to  use  the  term  or  not,  was  quite  soundly  dis- 
tinguished from  phenomena.  It  meant  properly  meta- 
physical reality,  of  which  the  phenomena  are  the  mani- 
festation. Kant's  expressions  about  the  thing-in-itself 
are  not  entirely  consistent;  but  the  view  to  which  he 
points  most  distinctly  is  that  reality  is  a  timeless  system 
of  ideas,  which  might  be  known,  if  a  speculative  meta- 
physic    were    possible,    under    the    form    of    a    Platonic 


l]  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  13 

Intelligible  World,  but  is  actually  most  comprehensible  as 
a  system  of  ethical  and  aesthetic  norms.  For  Hegel, 
reaUty  was  Thought,  knowable  in  the  actual  world  and 
manifested  above  all  in  history.  For  Schopenhauer  it 
was  Will,  temporarily  individualised  in  conscious  beings. 
For  Berkeley  it  was  a  system  of  spirits  communicating 
by  ideas  (which  are  groupings  of  sense-elements),  held  in 
unity  by  a  supreme  personal  spirit,  which  determines 
the  sequence  of  ideas  so  that  communication  is  possible 
in  a  common  world  of  which,  and  of  its  parts,  the  being  is 
to  be  perceived  (esse  is  percipi).  For  Hume,  if  he  had 
put  his  result  in  a  dogmatic  form,  it  would  have  been 
particular  impressions  (mental  states)  composing  a  flux 
in  which  individual  personalities  are  temporary  appear- 
ances of  unification.  All  these  ontological  views,  clearly, 
are  consistent  with  ideahsm  in  the  phenomenist  sense; 
which  of  course  does  not  in  the  least  deny  that  what  we 
call  the  external  world  indicates  a  reality,  but  denies 
that  it  is  itself,  in  its  appearance  as  objects  and  events 
in  space  and  time,  the  reality  from  which  minds  can  be 
explained.  On  this  side  of  the  doctrine,  no  one  has  ever 
refuted  Berkeley. 

The  Berkeleyan  ideahsm  illustrates  an  interesting 
remark  of  Mr  Russell,  that  the  most  hopeful  thing  for 
progress  in  any  philosophical  system  is  the  element 
inexplicable  on  its  own  principles.  Idealism  of  rationalist 
type,  in  the  schools  of  antiquity  descended  from  Plato, 
had  shown  quite  effectively  that  mental  processes  cannot 
be  explained  from  material  processes  in  the  organism. 
The  phenomenist  view  of  material  things  had  also  been 
attained  as  a  doctrine.  Berkeley,  however,  discovered, 
from  the  experientialist  position  of  a  disciple  of  Locke, 


14  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

a  much  more  generally  apprehensible  way  of  proving  the 
truth  of  the  doctrine,  now  again  emerging  in  modern 
philosophy.  He  proved  it  by  means  of  the  "surd" 
in  ancient  and  modern  materialism.  According  to 
Democritus,  the  reahty  is  that  which  we  know  by  touch. 
The  atom,  which  ultimately  resists  effort,  is  "being"; 
void,  which  does  not  resist,  but  lets  the  atoms  go  through 
it,  is  a  kind  of  real  "not-being."  QuaHties  such  as  sound, 
colour,  and  so  forth,  exist  only  "by  convention";  that 
is,  we  talk  about  them  as  if  they  were  really  in  things, 
but  they  are  not.  Modern  physicists,  when  the  time  was 
ripe  for  the  scientific  application  of  atomism,  carried 
forward  this  Democritean  view.  The  ultimate  realities, 
in  their  conception  of  the  world,  were  resistant  and 
extended  particles  like  the  atoms  of  Democritus.  By 
the  real  motions  of  these  real  particles  certain  ideas  of 
qualities — sound,  colour,  heat,  now  called  "secondary 
qualities  "  as  distinguished  from  the  primary  quahties  of 
resistance  and  extension — are  raised  in  us.  These  exist 
only  in  us,  not  in  things,  the  reality  of  which  is  simply 
to  be  groups  of  variously  agitated  particles.  Thus  the 
"surd"  remained;  for  clearly  no  explanation  had  been 
given  of  the  "secondary  quahties."  You  do  not  expel 
sensations  from  the  world  by  calling  them  "conven- 
tional" or  saying  they  only  exist  in  us.  Berkeley,  in  his 
fresh  polemic  against  materialism,  turned  the  accepted 
doctrines  of  the  physicists  against  themselves;  showed 
that  the  sensations  on  the  ground  of  which  we  affirm  the 
primary  quahties  are  just  as  much  in  our  minds  as  the 
others;  that  all  ahke,  indeed,  are  as  much  "in  us"  as 
those  typical  examples  of  pure  "subjectivity,"  pleasure 
and  pain ;  finally,  that  of  material  substance,  in  distinction 


l]  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  15 

from  groupings  of  perceptions,  we  neither  know  nor  can 
conceive  or  imagine  anything.  This  does  not  mean  that 
the  world  with  the  things  in  it  is  unreal :  on  the  contrary, 
all  alike  in  the  world  is  real,  in  the  only  sense  in  which 
it  can  be,  as  a  constant  order  in  our  perceptions. 

From  this  constant  order  we  are  entitled  rationally 
to  infer  the  existence  of  minds  other  than  our  own; 
simply  because  we  perceive  groupings  of  phenomena 
resembling  our  own  organism,  with  which  particular 
group  of  phenomena  our  own  consciousness  is  associated 
in  a  peculiar  way.  Thus  the  common  objection  is  met 
that  the  Berkeleyan  idealism  leads  to  "solipsism";  that 
is,  to  the  assertion  by  an  individual  mind  that  it  is  the 
only  real  existence,  other  persons  having  no  existence 
beyond  their  appearances.  It  is  rationally  met,  that  is 
to  say;  for  I  do  not  suppose  that  we  actually  come  to 
beheve  in  the  existence  of  other  persons  by  any  such 
inference.  The  question  for  the  philosopher,  however,  is, 
what  we  are  entitled  to  believe,  not,  how  we  come  to 
believe  it.  We  believe  many  things  on  instinct  to  which 
the  test  of  science  or  philosophy  is  applied  with  varying 
results.  The  Berkeleyan  ideahst  finds  that  the  ana- 
logical argument  to  other  persons  is  both  sound  in  itself 
and  leads  to  an  intelHgible  conclusion ;  whereas  the 
notion  of  material  substance,  if  analysed,  leaves  no 
residue  that  is  non-phenomenal.  Here,  we  may  say, 
there  is  left  only  a  confused  notion  vaguely  pointing  to 
metaphysics^,   but  incapable  of  any   properly  scientific 

^  This  is  slightly  to  supplement  Berkeley,  who,  at  least  in  his  first 
phase,  did  not  concede  so  much  as  this.  Kant,  on  the  other  hand, 
did  not  become  quite  clear  of  supposing  that  this  notion  can  be  something 
for  science;  which,  on  that  view,  would  have  an  "object"  that  is  neither 
pure  phenomenon  nor  "thing-in-itself." 


16  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH. 

statement;     for   science   has   to    do    only   with    pheno- 
mena. 

I  do  not  know  whether  Mr  Russell  will  find  that  this 
meets  his  objections  to  idealism;  but  he  has  some 
positive  arguments  for  realism  not  yet  touched  upon. 
With  the  portion  of  these  that  concerns  the  mathematical 
infinite  I  shall  try  to  deal.  If  this  is  knowable  as  a 
"thing,"  and  not  merely  as  an  "idea,"  then  ideahsm  as 
I  understand  it  must  be  abandoned.  Now  my  knowledge 
of  mathematics  is  undoubtedly  very  small  in  comparison 
with  Mr  Russell's;  but  the  question  of  philosophical 
principle  seems  to  me  to  come  near  the  beginning  and 
to  concern  the  elements  of  the  subject;  and  so  I  venture 
to  discuss  it.  I  find  no  mystery  in  Mr  Russell's  ex- 
positions, such  as  Berkeley  found  in  those  of  contemporary 
"analysts."  They  are  to  me  quite  intelhgible,  but  all 
quite  exphcable  on  the  principles  of  ideahsm  without 
supposing  infinite  numbers  to  be  real  collections.  The 
true  mode  of  explaining  the  infinite  in  mathematics 
I  seem  to  myself  to  have  found  in  De  Morgan  and 
Renouvier,  one  a  philosophical  mathematician,  the  other 
a  philosopher  with  a  considerable  knowledge  of  mathe- 
matics. What  I  have  learnt  from  them  I  shall  now  try 
to  apply  to  infinite  numbers.  I  take  it  to  be  merely 
historical  accident  that  the  thinkers  competent  by  special 
knowledge  to  expound  the  more  recent  developments 
in  pure  mathematics  are  realists.  Their  special  know- 
ledge has  enabled  them  to  display  a  subtlety  in  defending 
their  reahsm  which,  it  seems  to  me,  is  unnecessary  for 
the  defence  of  ideahsm.  The  "short  way"  that  I  propose 
from  the  ideahst  point  of  view  is  this.  There  is  no  need 
to    contest   what   is   said   about   the   orders   of  infinite 


l]  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  17 

numbers,  and  their  relations  to  one  another  of  greater 
and  less,  paradoxical  as  these  are.  The  "number  of  all 
finite  numbers,"  for  example,  is  greater  than  the  "number 
of  all  finite  squares";  and  yet  both  are  infinite,  for 
neither  can  be  counted^.  Since  they  cannot  be  thought 
as  results  of  counting,  they  are  unthinkable  as  actual 
collections;  but  the  difficulty  disappears  if  we  regard 
"infinite  numbers"  as  names  for  certain  processes  in 
mind  that  can  be  carried  on  indefinitely  with  application 
to  (phenomenal)  objects,  according  to  a  certain  law  of 
counting,  different  in  different  cases.  We  can  make  as 
many  terms  as  we  hke,  and  can  apply  them  to  objects 
or  parts  of  objects,  but  there  is  not  an  actually  existent 
infinite  series  of  terms.  The  infinite  series  of  fractions 
less  than  P  is  really  what  Renouvier  called  an  "indefinite 
possibility"  of  dividing.  We  can  make  as  many  as  we 
like,  and  can  go  on  applying  them  without  limit  to  a 
"continuous"  magnitude,  but  there  is  not  an  infinite 
series  of  actually  existent  fractions.  To  speak  as  if  there 
were  is  scientific  shorthand  for  describing  a  continuous 
quantity.  So  I  can  attach  a  meaning  to  calhng  the 
number  of  all  fim'te  numbers  and  the  number  of  all  finite 

1  Our  Knowledge  of  the  External  World,  pp.  194-195  (comment  on 
a  passage  from  Galileo's  Mathematical  Discourses).  "It  is  actually  the 
case  that  the  number  of  square  (finite)  numbers  is  the  same  as  the 
number  of  (finite)  numbers.... But  although  the  infinite  numbers  which 
Galileo  discusses  are  equal,  Cantor  has  shown  that  what  Simplicius 
[a  personage  in  the  Dialogue]  could  not  conceive  is  true,  namely,  thr.t 
there  are  an  infinite  number  of  different  infinite  numbers,  and  that  the 
conception  of  greater  and  less  can  be  perfectly  well  applied  to  them. 
The  whole  of  Simplicius's  difficulty  comes,  as  is  evident,  from  his  belief 
that,  if  greater  and  less  can  be  applied,  a  part  of  an  infinite  collection 
must  have  fewer  terms  than  the  whole ;  and  when  this  is  denied,  all 
contradictions  disappear." 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  178-179. 

w.  E.  2 


18  METAPHYSICAL   PRELIMINARIES  [CH.  I 

squares  equally  infinite  numbers  though  the  first  is 
greater  than  the  second,  only  if  this  is  taken  as  scientific 
shorthand  (not  to  say  "useful  nonsense").  When  they 
are  brought  under  the  conditions  of  thought,  I  find  no 
puzzle.  The  infinity  of  both  series  ahke  means  that  you 
can  carry  both  beyond  any  assignable  number  of  terms. 
That  the  first  is  greater  than  the  second  means  that, 
wherever  you  stop,  the  whole  is  greater  than  its  part. 
If  you  do  not  stop,  there  is  no  whole. 

Thus,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
mathematical  theory  of  the  infinite  which,  when  clearly 
conceived,  requires  us  to  suppose  collections  of  real  things 
that  do  not  comply  with  the  conditions  of  phenomenal 
presentation.  Whether  in  its  a  priori  or  a  posteriori 
elements,  science  is  alike  phenomenal.  On  this  side  the 
admission  of  a  certain  element  of  metaphysical  Rationahsm 
makes  no  difference  to  English  Idealism  as  theory  of 
knowledge.  It  is  true  that  pure  phenomenism  is  in- 
sufficient for  philosophy ;  that  we  need  a  theory  of  being 
as  well  as  of  appearance ;  but,  as  has  been  briefly  indicated, 
there  are  many  possible  idealistic  ontologies.  This  is  all 
that  was  necessary  in  an  introduction  to  an  essay  of 
which  the  direct  object  is  not  metaphysical.  Indeed  I 
must  next  point  out  that  the  principles  of  ethics  not  only 
do  not  depend  on  any  of  the  possible  ontological  doctrines, 
but  do  not  even  depend  on  the  generalised  theory  of 
knowledge  to  which  I  have  almost  exclusively  hmited 
myself. 


CHAPTER   II 

SEPARATION  OF  ETHICS  FROM  METAPHYSICS 

The  classical  statement  of  the  separation  of  ethics 
from  metaphysics  is  that  of  Hume's  Treatise^,  where  he 
objects  to  systems  of  morahty  in  general  that  they  proceed 
as  if  ought  or  ought  not  can  follow  immediately,  without 
the  introduction  of  any  new  principle,  from  is  or  is  not. 
This  appUes  historically  both  to  systems  called  natural- 
istic and  to  those  called  rationalistic;  though,  as  Pro- 
fessor Carveth  Read  has  observed^,  not  to  all.  Of  those 
to  which  it  does  not  apply,  the  systems  that  may  be  most 
conveniently  singled  out  are  those  of  Aristotle  and  Kant ; 
for,  on  the  next  question  of  general  principle  to  be  dis- 
cussed, these  are  antithetic.  Both  are  very  complex  and 
in  their  own  manner  include  everything;  but  Aristotle's 
system  is  directed  by  the  idea  of  moral  end,  Kant's  by 
that  of  moral  law.  Neither,  of  course,  is  without  meta- 
physical points  of  contact,  but  essentially  they  are  both 
free  from  the  fallacy  of  trying  to  deduce  what  is  to  be  done 
by  man  from  the  mere  nature  of  some  reality.  Aristotle 
holds  that  in  attaining  the  highest  good,  which  is  con- 
templative thought,  man  is  so  far  imitating  the  life  of 

^  Book  III,  Part  i,  sect.  1. 

'  Natural  and  Social  Morals,  p.  6. 

2—2 


20  SEPARATION   OF   ETHICS  [CH. 

God ;  but  he  would  still  regard  thought  as  man's  highest 
good  even  if  it  were  simply  a  good  for  man,  and  not  (as 
he  holds  that  it  is)  realised  perpetually  in  Mind  that 
thinks  only  itself.  Kant,  in  the  Practical  Reason,  contends 
for  an  affirmation  that  the  universe  is  so  ruled  as  to  join 
happiness  to  man's  observance  of  the  moral  law;  but  he 
holds  that  law  to  be  completely  obhgatory  for  man 
whatever  the  constitution  of  the  universe  may  be.  This 
is  to  be  clear  of  the  fallacy  pointed  out  by  Hume,  as 
neither  Platonism  nor  Stoicism  is  clear  of  it.  No  doubt 
in  both  these  cases  the  ethical  teaching  of  the  school 
admits  of  a  statement  to  which  logical  objection  could 
not  be  taken ;  but,  in  so  far  as  it  is  professedly  deduced 
from  the  theoretical  doctrine,  the  logical  objection  is  fatal. 
To  determine  the  order  of  goods  from  the  scale  of  beings 
according  to  the  degree  in  which  these  are  "real"  is  a 
most  typical  expression  of  the  "metaphysical  fallacy"; 
as  the  precept  to  "live  according  to  nature"  is  a  direct 
expression  of  the  "naturalistic  fallacy,"  which  is  merely 
another  form  of  the  first. 

The  writer  who  has  tracked  down  these  fallacies  most 
eSectively  is  Mr  G.  E.  Moore  in  Principia  Ethica.  I  do 
not  propose  to  go  over  the  ground  again,  but  will  briefly 
note  on  my  own  account  that  any  speculative  conclusions 
arrived  at  or  suggested  as  possible  in  the  preceding 
chapter  do  nothing  at  all  to  give  us  a  starting-point  in 
ethics.  That  reahty  is  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  mind 
tells  us  nothing  in  relation  to  conduct  that  is  not  already 
obvious.  For  it  is  obvious  that  the  existence  of  ethics 
depends  on  the  existence  of  minds  in  some  sense;  but 
whether  these  are  temporary  or  permanent  existences, 
existences  not  referable  to  anything  non-mental  as  their 


Il]  FROM   METAPHYSICS  21 

cause  or  simply  determinations  (if  this  were  intelligible)  of 
material  things,  makes  no  difference  to  the  ethical  ques- 
tion, how  shall  minds  regulate  their  conduct  in  so  far  as 
it  is  in  their  power  to  regulate  it.  Science  and  meta- 
physics can  tell  us,  or  assume  to  tell  us,  much  about  our 
power  and  its  limits  and  about  the  nature  of  the  things 
among  which  we  are  placed ;  but  the  question  for  ethics 
concerns  our  choice  when  there  is  a  choice,  and  this 
supposes  that  actually  something  is  at  present  undeter- 
mined, that  is,  not  yet  realised,  not  yet  part  of  anything 
that  is  there  whether  we  will  it  or  not.  In  asserting  this 
"apparent  freedom  of  choice,"  which  is  all  that  is  re- 
quired, we  are  not  asserting  anything  metaphysical,  but 
a  mere  datum  like  the  existence  of  our  thoughts  and 
feelings  and  of  certain  objects  that  may  or  may  not  be 
more  than  groupings  of  phenomena.  Thus,  for  the 
purpose  of  ethical  inquiry,  we  may  place  ourselves  in  the 
beginning  simply  at  the  common-sense  point  of  view, 
assuming  nothing  but  minds  (temporary  or  permanent) 
among  objects  (temporary  or  permanent)  able  to  act 
(whatever  this  may  ultimately  mean)  upon  objects  and, 
through  objects,  upon  each  other.  The  more  we  know 
about  fact  or  reality,  whether  scientifically  or  meta- 
physically, the  more  conditions  of  choice  there  will  be; 
but  the  essence  of  the  choice  must  always  depend  on 
what  we  think  we  ought  to  do  so  far  as  the  fact  is  not 
already  determined  apart  from  us;  for  if  it  is  so  deter- 
mined we  have  no  choice.  Even  then,  to  acquiesce  in 
not  having  a  choice  is  a  kind  of  action  of  our  own,  to 
which  the  term  ought  or  ought  not  may  be  applicable. 
And  ought  or  ought  not,  here  too,  is  not  deducible  from  the 
bare  fact. 


22  SEPARATION   OF   ETHICS  [CH. 

Perhaps  an  even  more  distinctive  part  of  Mr  Moore's 
work  than  his  refutation  of  the  naturalistic  and  meta- 
physical fallacies  is  his  refutation  of  Hedonism  as  usually 
understood.  Here  he  depends  much  for  starting-points 
on  the  Philebus  of  Plato,  to  which  it  will  always  be 
necessary  to  go  back  when  any  subtlety  is  aimed  at  in 
the  discussion  of  pleasure  in  its  relation  to  ends  considered 
as  desirable.  That  pleasure  is  actually  aimed  at,  Mr 
Moore  elaborately  shows  on  the  model  of  his  preceding 
discussions,  does  not  prove  that  it  ought  to  be  aimed  at. 
What  he  himself  is  in  search  of  is  a  scale  of  goods  or  values 
arranged,  we  might  put  it,  in  the  order  of  their  objective 
preferableness.  Of  course  all  moral  philosophers  aim  at 
objectivity  in  the  sense  of  universahty.  The  naturalistic 
and  metaphysical  fallacies  arose  from  the  search  for 
something  general  to  place  above  the  mere  temporary 
choice  of  the  will.  For  some  who  had  seen  through  these, 
hedonism  seemed  to  have  fixed  on  something  of  the  kind, 
because  pleasure  and  absence  of  pain  were  apparently 
identical  with  universally  preferable  feeling.  But  is  the 
preferableness  of  a  total  state  identical  with  its  pre- 
ferableness when  compared  with  other  states  simply  as 
regards  the  quantity  of  pleasure^  it  includes?  Plato, 
merely  by  submitting  the  question  in  the  concrete  to 
intuitive  judgment,  showed  that  it  is  not.  He  made  it 
perfectly  clear  on  the  one  side  that,  ready  as  we  may  be 
to  allow  that  knowledge  is  a  good,  we  should  not  desire 
a  perpetual  state  of  the  completest  and  most  conscious 
knowledge  (if  it  could  exist)  without  a  trace  of  pleasurable 

^  This  is  put  for  simplicity.  Mr  Moore  has  gone  through  all  the 
complexities  that  come  into  view  when  pleasure  and  pain  are  considered 
as  present  or  absent  or  in  various  degrees  coexistent. 


Il]  FROM   METAPHYSICS  23 

feeling.  On  the  other  side,  we  should  not  desire  the 
perpetuity  of  a  state  in  which  we  were  steeped  in  pleasure 
without  consciousness  of  any  intellectual  relation,  a  state 
in  which  we  knew  nothing  for  ever  but  were  all  feeling, 
like  a  beatified  oyster.  Thus  the  problem  of  the  de- 
sirable life  has  to  be  solved  by  determining  a  certain 
mixture  in  which  both  knowledge  and  pleasure  shall  have 
their  part.  Starting  thence,  Mr  Moore  has  followed  up 
the  problem  with  extreme  subtlety,  and  with  results 
which  seem  to  me  on  the  whole  sound.  In  the  study  of 
his  results  I  have  myself  arrived  at  an  additional  hedonic 
paradox. 

The  element  of  truth  in  hedonism,  I  hold,  as  I  have 
consistently  held,  is  that  unless  there  goes  wdth  it  some 
subjective  accompaniment  of  feehng  which  is  regarded 
as  preferable  to  other  feehngs,  no  state  or  process  can  be 
itself  an  object  of  preference^.  It  is  understood  of  course 
that  we  are  speaking  of  preference  by  self-conscious  or 
reflective  thought.  Mr  Moore,  a  Httle  more  doubtfully, 
decides  in  the  same  sense;  but  the  contention  that 
interests  him  most  is  that  "intrinsic  value"  is  not  pro- 
portional to  pleasure.  In  a  different  way  I  have  allowed 
this  by  definitely  rejecting  Bentham's  notion  of  happiness 
as  consisting  of  an  algebraical  sum  of  pleasures  and 
pains ;  pleasures  counting  as  positive  and  pains  as  negative 
quantities.  Happiness,  I  argued,  is  a  total  state  of  the 
personahty  not  even  in  theory  to  be  estimated  by  any 
calculus,  because  it  is  not  definable  in  hedonic  terms 
through  and  through^.     Mr  Moore,  when  that  was  written, 

1  I  still  adhere  to  the  expression  of  this  in  a  review  of  Professor 
Sorley's  Ethics  of  Naturalism  (1st  ed.).  Mind,  O.S.  xi.  265  (April,  1880). 

2  The  Liberal  State  (1907),  p.  25. 


24  SEPARATION   OF   ETHICS  [CH. 

had  already  worked  out  the  theory  of  hedonism  and  the 
objections  to  it  with  far  more  exactitude.  His  general 
position  is  finally  that  we  can  add  to  the  intrinsic  value 
(the  preferableness)  of  a  total  state  by  adding  something 
that  is  not  pleasure;  consequently,  pleasure  will  not 
serve  by  itself  to  test  the  ends  of  action.  Moreover, 
total  value  may  be  greatly  increased  by  adding  something 
which  by  itself  has  little  or  no  value,  or  even  negative 
value.  The  subject  of  intrinsic  value  will  recur  later: 
in  the  meantime  I  state  my  own  paradox,  which  I  have 
not  found  anticipated  either  in  Principia  Eihica  or  in 
the  smaller  Ethics^. 

Let  us  suppose  a  universe  without  either  pleasure  or 
pain :  such  a  universe  would  be  made  better  by  intro- 
ducing some  pain  and  no  positive  pleasure.  For  in  the 
former  universe  there  could  be  no  preferred  subjective 
state  and  therefore  no  end  and  no  good;  while  in  the 
latter  tranquillity  would  be  a  desired  state,  an  end  and 
a  good.  This  is  in  fact  the  world  as  Plato  in  one  of  his 
hedonic  speculations  supposed  it  to  be,  and  as  it  was 
afterwards  supposed  to  be  by  Epicurus;  what  we  call 
pleasures  being  held  to  consist  only  in  release  from  pain. 
Such  a  world,  I  contend,  if  there  are  means  of  overcoming 
the  pain  and  attaining  intervals  of  the  desired  tranquillity, 
is  better  than  that  for  which  we  have  supposed  it  sub- 
stituted. 

I  do  not  myself  regard  this  as  the  actual  constitution 
of  our  world,  but  recognise  the  existence  of  positive 
pleasures.  These  are  a  part  of  the  ends  of  action,  and 
the  consideration  of  them  helps  us  to  classify  some  goods ; 
though  the  "hedonical  calculus"  certainly  will  not  enable 
^  A  passage  in  Ethics,  p.  244,  is  on  the  verge  of  it. 


Il]  FROM   METAPHYSICS  25 

US  to  fix  our  larger  preferences.  But  if  out  of  these 
preferences  we  are  to  construct  an  ethical  doctrine,  there 
must  necessarily  be  some  attempt  to  reach  the  kind  of 
agreement  that  the  hedonists  prematurely  thought  to 
be  attained  or  attainable.  Such  an  attempt,  however 
often  it  may  fail,  does  not  seem  in  itself  chimerical. 
Preferences  have  changed  historically,  partly  through 
argument.  Ideal  goods  have  become  more  distinctly 
conceived;  and  there  is  an  art  of  persuasion  by  which 
they  may  be  brought  under  common  points  of  view  that 
will  determine  their  rank  in  opinion.  There  is  also  some 
spontaneous  convergence.  Mr  Moore's  estimate  of  the 
things  that  have  most  intrinsic  value  differs  httle  from 
Comte's  final  estimate,  and  seems  to  have  been  arrived 
at  independently.  Among  intrinsic  goods,  he  puts  in  the 
highest  place  aesthetic  enjoyments  and  personal  affections, 
with  knowledge  in  the  third  place  and  subordinated  to 
the  first.  Professor  Carveth  Read,  following  Aristotle 
and  Spinoza  in  making  philosophy  the  highest  good, 
takes  a  view  less  unhke  the  preceding  than  might  at 
first  appear;  for  philosophy,  thus  conceived,  is  of  course 
not  any  kind  of  mere  special  knowledge,  but  includes  as 
elements  beauty  and  "intellectual  love."  And  the  highest 
good  does  not  mean  the  sole  and  exclusive  good. 

But  in  the  end,  whatever  further  agreement  may  be 
reached  through  discussion  and  arts  of  persuasion,  have 
we  arrived  at  anything  that  can  be  called  ethics  proper? 
Or  are  we  still,  as  Mr  Moore  imphes  in  the  claim  he  makes 
for  his  Principia  Ethica,  only  at  the  stage  of  prolegomena  ? 
In  my  opinion,  we  are  only  at  that  stage.  The  most 
distinctive  part  of  ethics  has  not  yet  come  into  view. 


CHAPTER   III 

END   AND  LAW  IN  ETHICS 

So  far,  it  has  been  assumed  that  the  end  of  action  is 
a  good  to  be  pursued;  and  this  in  general  terms  is  in- 
contestable. Without  some  good  in  view  as  a  conscious 
end,  there  would  be  no  rational  as  distinguished  from 
instinctive  action.  Ethics  is  of  course  concerned  properly 
with  rational  action;  that  is,  with  conduct  directed  by 
some  general  conception  to  which  it  is  held  that  particular 
actions  ought  to  conform.  But  what  is  the  meaning  of 
this  word  oughf^.  Does  it  merely  mean  that,  given  a 
certain  end,  the  way  of  reaching  it  pointed  out  by  the 
law  of  causation  must  be  adopted  if  we  do  not  wish  to 
miss  it?  Or  does  the  word  apply  also  to  the  end;  so 
that  it  can  be  said  we  ought  to  choose  such  and  such 
a  good?  And  if  we  choose  the  wrong  end  or  take  the 
wrong  way  to  the  right  end,  what  is  to  be  said?  Are 
we  simply  unwise,  either  through  want  of  sufficient 
knowledge  or  of  consistency  with  ourselves,  or  through 
not  having  been  rightly  persuaded  about  the  value  of  one 
good  in  distinction  from  another?  Or  is  there  the 
possibiUty  that  we  are  wrong  in  a  sense  that  does  not 
mean  exactly  the  same  as  unwise? 

Some  would  say  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  case  but 


CH.  Ill]  END    AND    LAW   IN    ETHICS  27 

unwisdom,  perhaps  in  extreme  cases  a  mental  infirmity 
analogous  to  disease.  The  function  of  the  moral  philoso- 
pher is  to  make  the  relative  value  of  goods  an  object  of 
clear  knowledge.  The  educator  and  the  practical  moralist, 
trained  in  the  philosophical  schools,  must  apply  arts  of 
persuasion  in  order  to  impress  the  true  system  on  the 
general  mind.  In  extreme  cases  of  missing  the  good,  the 
State  may  apply  remedies  in  the  form  of  penalties; 
partly  for  the  sake  of  others,  because  they  are  liable  to 
suffer  injury,  and  penalties  inflicted  deter  those  who 
might  imitate  the  actions  of  the  offender;  and  partly  in 
order  to  cure  the  offender  himself,  whose  welfare  is  for 
its  own  sake  an  object  of  interest  to  other  members  of 
the  community. 

But  already  in  this  view  we  find  implicitly  a  principle 
more  expressly  formulated  by  morahsts  who  find  the  idea 
not  simply  of  unwisdom  but  of  moral  wrong  in  a  more 
distinctive  sense  in  certain  modes  of  pursuing  ends.  In 
the  view  just  stated,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  morahst, 
theoretical  or  practical,  the  educator,  and  the  legislator, 
are  all  supposed  to  be  actuated  by  motives  of  general 
benevolence.  Now  many  of  the  moralists  known  as 
Utihtarians  find  the  idea  of  rightdoing  in  action  according 
to  the  principle  of  general  benevolence  or  "altruism," 
that  is,  in  seeking  the  good  of  others  or  of  all,  and  the 
idea  of  wrongdoing  in  aiming  exclusively  at  one's  own 
good  to  the  disadvantage  of  others  or  in  indifference  to 
them. 

This  at  first  sight  comes  nearer  to  the  notion  con- 
veyed by  Ethics.  Morality  in  the  popular  view  is  not 
identified  with  prudence  or  with  intellectual  consistency. 
In  the  system  that  attempts  this  identification,  it  would 


28  END    AND    LAW   IN    ETHICS  [CH. 

seem  to  an  outsider  that  the  moral  interests  of  life  are 
represented  more  especially  by  the  philosophers,  educators 
and  legislators.  And  a  modern  utilitarian  might  very 
plausibly  argue  that  that  is  because  the  principle  of 
general  benevolence  is  represented  most  in  them.  They 
aim  at  the  good  of  all  spontaneously.  The  rest  of  the 
community  they  treat  as  their  charges,  to  be  disciplined 
into  right  for  their  own  good  by  having  the  appropriate 
trains  of  associated  ideas  set  gomg  in  their  minds.  For 
the  existence  of  morahty,  then,  we  must  suppose  spon- 
taneous altruism  somewhere.  This  is  the  true  spring  of 
it  all. 

When  we  come  to  the  application,  however,  difficulties 
soon  arise.  There  seems  to  be  a  more  definite  and 
stringent  meaning  of  right  and  wrong  than  has  hitherto 
come  into  view.  This  meaning  does  not  depend  simply 
on  the  contrast  between  egoism  and  altruism.  It  may  be 
made  to  appear  as  if  it  did  by  using  the  "  question-begging 
epithets,"  as  Bentham  might  have  called  them,  of 
"selfish"  and  "unselfish,"  and  then  asserting  that  selfish- 
ness is  always  wrong  and  unselfishness  always  right.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  every  kind  of  complication. 
Self-assertion  may  be  in  some  circumstances  a  right  and 
a  duty;  self-sacrifice  may  be  wrong.  If  there  are  "in- 
trinsic values,"  these  must  be  known  to  be  such  for 
ourselves  before  we  can  seek  them  for  others;  so  that 
egoism  cannot  even  in  the  ideal  be  extruded  from  human 
life.  And,  when  we  have  our  scheme  of  values,  are  we 
to  sacrifice  for  ourselves  a  value  that  we  regard  as  elevated 
in  order  to  procure  for  others  something  we  regard  as 
contemptible?  Nothing  could  be  more  unselfish,  but 
many  moralists  would  think  it  wrong.     Let  us  suppose 


ni]  END    AND    LAW    IN    ETHICS  29 

that  a  few  persons  in  a  community  desire  freedom  while 
the  majority  would  be  more  comfortable  in  slavery  and 
know  that  they  would  be.  The  few,  on  the  other  hand, 
who  desire  freedom,  know  that  they  are  at  least  strong 
enough,  if  they  choose,  to  make  acquiescence  too  un- 
comfortable for  the  rest.  Much  misery,  however,  will 
be  caused  in  the  struggle.  Shall  they  "unselfishly" 
submit  in  order  to  avoid  this  and  to  give  the  majority 
the  Idnd  of  happiness  they  desire  and  can  understand? 
Milton,  at  least,  who  was  a  morahst,  would  have  despised 
the  decision  in  such  a  case  to  comply  with  the  desires  of 
those  who  love  more  "  bondage  with  ease  than  strenuous 
liberty." 

This  illustration  brings  into  view  the  ethical  doctrine 
which  in  modern  times  has  been  set  against  all  the  forms 
of  that  which  has  been  hitherto  considered.  What  we 
have  to  determine  primarily,  it  is  said,  is  not  the  good 
that  is  to  be  the  end  of  action,  whether  it  is  a  good  for 
one  or  for  all,  whether  it  is  to  be  pursued  selfishly  or 
unselfishly,  but  the  moral  law  to  which  actions  ought  to 
conform.  This  moral  law  is  not  a  deduction  from  any 
end,  but  is  vahd  simply  as  law.  Its  form  is  that  of 
reciprocal  relations  of  right  and  duty.  The  general 
expression  for  it  is  justice,  to  which  actions  prompted  by 
egoistic  and  altruistic  motives  are  ahke  under  the  obhgation 
of  submitting.  This  obligation  is  not  imposed  by  any 
external  command,  whether  of  a  human  or  superhuman 
legislator,  but  by  the  rational  will  of  the  individual 
person,  who  imposes  the  law  upon  himself.  The  person 
is  "autonomous."  At  the  same  time  the  legislation  is 
universal,  being  apphcable  to  all  rational  beings  alike 
under  the  same  conditions.     And  this  stringent  obhgation, 


30  END    AND    LAW   IN    ETHICS  [CH. 

some  have  contended,  is  precisely  that  which  protects 
human  liberty  from  possible  suppression  by  the  benevolent 
utilitarianism  which,  under  sanctions  of  persuasion  or  of 
force,  would  seek  to  promote  good  or  happiness  directly 
by  authoritative  systems  of  educative  and  of  poUtical 
institutions. 

A  utiHtarian  who  values  liberty  might  reply:  I 
accept  precisely  what  you  call  the  law  of  justice,  but  as 
a  means  to  the  kind  of  community — a  community  of 
freemen — which  to  me  is  the  end.  This  reply,  however, 
when  closely  considered,  seems  to  be  pohtical  rather  than 
properly  ethical.  No  doubt  if  a  community  prefers  or 
can  be  persuaded  to  prefer  hberty,  it  will,  if  it  desires  to 
survive,  adopt  the  means  to  that  end.  But  what  is  there, 
ethically,  to  distinguish  the  taste  of  a  number  of  persons 
who  prefer  hberty  from  the  taste  of  a  number  of  other 
persons  who  prefer  despotism  ?  Only  a  doctrine  like  that 
of  the  moral  law  regarded  as  supreme  over  all  ends,  its 
adherents  finally  insist,  can  determine  the  question  of 
right. 

And  the  appeal  of  the  doctrine  is  two-sided.  If  it  is 
held  to  be  the  only  firm  ground  of  political  liberty,  a 
powerful  appeal  is  also  made  to  the  conservative  mind 
when  the  idea  of  supreme  moral  law  is  found  to  go  back 
to  the  hoariest  antiquity.  The  unwritten  and  eternal 
laws  associated  \\^th  divinity  in  the  famous  passages  of 
Sophocles — the  speech  of  Antigone  to  Creon^  and  the 
chorus  in  the  Oedipus  Tyrannus^ — are  not  appealed  to 
as  new  but  as  immemorial.  In  Aeschylus,  justice  is  the 
appanage  of  the  elder  gods  or  of  impersonal  Fate,  whose 

1  Ant.  450-470.  «  Oed.  T.  863-871. 


Ill]  END    AND    LAW   IN    ETHICS  31 

inviolable  Right  will  bring  the  new  Powers  that  have 
set  themselves  against  it  to  their  doom. 

Yet,  old  as  is  this  generalised  assertion  of  moral  law, 
it  was  never,  in  the  explicit  systems  of  Greek  philosophy, 
made  ostensibly  the  directing  principle.  This  was  always 
the  idea  of  end,  in  subordination  to  which  the  moral 
virtues  were  classified  as  aptitudes  for  attaining  it. 
Justice,  however,  where  if  anywhere  the  idea  of  law 
prevails,  was  always  regarded  as  the  chief  social  virtue ; 
and  Aristotle,  it  has  been  noticed,  does  not  derive  it 
immediately  from  the  end,  but  from  quasi-mathematical 
notions.  In  modern  times,  on  the  other  hand,  while  the 
same  precedence  has  not  always  been  accorded  to  justice, 
the  idea  of  moral  law  has  at  length  come  to  be  formulated 
in  the  way  .that  we  have  seen.  The  first  to  receive  poetic 
it  has  been  the  last  to  receive  scientific  expression. 

But  is  there  not,  some  may  ask,  a  universally  vahd 
norm  in  the  idea  of  end  or  good  ?  Mr  Moore  proposes  a 
way  that  seems  in  theory  to  get  rid  not  only  of  all  diflSi- 
culties  about  egoism  and  altruism,  but  of  all  conflict 
between  moral  law  and  end,  by  declaring  the  right  action 
to  be  always  that  of  which  in  the  long  run  the  consequences 
are  the  greatest  total  good  in  the  universe.  As  good  is 
the  objectively  preferable,  the  greatest  total  of  good  in 
the  universe  is  theoretically  capable  of  being  known. 
And,  as  I  must  treat  myself  impartially  simply  as  one 
element  in  the  total,  there  can  never  be  any  question 
whether  I  ought  to  be  egoistic  or  altruistic:  my  duty  to 
myself  and  others  is  simply  the  distribution  that  will 
give  the  greatest  total  good.  My  right,  clearly,  is  coex- 
tensive with  my  duty.  I  ought  to  have  precisely  the 
share  of  good  that  it  is  my  duty  to  assign  to  myself. 


32  END    AND    LAW   IN    ETHICS  [CH. 

Against  this,  there  are  two  arguments.  First,  we  are 
not  omniscient  beings,  as  we  should  have  to  be  to  know 
the  total  consequences  of  an  action.  These  are  knowable 
only  in  the  sense  that  knowledge  of  them  by  omniscience 
is  conceivable.  From  this  it  follows  that  we  can  never 
know  what  is  right.  But  in  fact  we  know  that  in  most 
cases  we  do  know  what  is  right.  Therefore,  to  know 
what  is  right  it  is  not  necessary  to  know  the  total  con- 
sequences of  an  action.  Secondly,  suppose  a  being  who 
knows  all  and  determines  what  shall  be.  Then,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  ethics  of  law,  since  the  universe 
includes  persons,  its  total  good  cannot  be  determined 
apart  from  ultimately  just  relations  among  persons.  The 
law  therefore  even  in  the  mind  of  omniscience  is  not 
wholly  derivative  from  an  end  that  does  not  include  it. 
This  reply  is  conclusive  at  the  present  stage,  because  to 
reject  a  type  of  ethics  not  yet  examined  would  be  to 
beg  the  question. 

The  positive  argument  for  holding  moral  law  rather 
than  end  or  good  to  be  the  most  distinctive  thing  in  ethics 
is  a  stringency  in  certain  ethical  judgments  that  never 
seems  derivable  even  from  our  own  most  decisive  estimates 
of  goods.  At  least  I  have  tried  and  failed  to  derive  it 
in  my  own  case.  Though  I  have  no  doubt  that  justice 
is  connected  as  a  means  with  Hberty  as  an  end  in  politics, 
I  have  not  found  that  derivation  ethically  sufficient  for 
the  establishment  of  the  principles  of  justice.  And  when 
we  define  good  by  a  less  abstract  term  than  the  political 
end,  its  insufficiency  to  support  properly  ethical  judgments 
becomes  more  obvious. 

Let  us  try  to  find  a  substitute  in  Comte's  formulation 
of  "altruism"  as  the  characteristically  ethical  attitude. 


Ill]  END    AND    LAW   IN    ETHICS  33 

For  if  there  is  any  hope  of  general  agreement,  it  might 
seem  to  be  here.  Devotion  to  Humanity,  in  the  whole 
complex  of  its  interests,  is  to  be  supreme;  but  under  it 
various  ideal  directions  are  allowed.  Art  or  knowledge, 
for  example,  may  rightly  be  pursued  as  ideal  ends.  Those 
who  select  these  ends,  Comte  recognises,  must  have  an 
impassioned  interest  in  them,  not  simply  determined  by 
relation  to  the  ethical  direction  of  life.  No  artist  or  man 
of  science  could  more  emphatically  declare  that  in- 
tellectual or  artistic  work  done  from  a  sense  of  duty 
without  enjoyment  in  the  exercise  of  the  special  faculty 
would  be  valueless.  But,  this  granted,  he  also  declares 
that  the  aim  of  serving  Humanity  must  be  supreme. 
Speciahsm  undirected  by  some  general  idea,  or  the 
cultivation  of  technical  accomphshment  out  of  relation 
to  any  wide  view  of  nature  or  human  hfe,  are  to  be 
conscientiously  repressed  by  the  student  or  artist  who 
feels  a  temptation  to  them;  and,  if  they  are  not  thus 
repressed,  pubUc  opinion  ought  to  disapprove  of  them  as 
immoral  deviations.  Now,  so  far  as  I  myself  am  con- 
cerned, I  am  quite  willing  to  comply  with  that  condition, 
and  to  test  my  pursuits  or  have  them  tested  in  relation  to 
general  interests  of  Humanity.  In  the  study  of  the 
history  of  philosophy,  for  example,  I  indulge  no  purely 
antiquarian  impulse;  if  I  study  a  special  period,  it  is 
for  the  sake  of  getting  a  grasp  of  the  historical  movement 
as  a  whole  with  a  bearing  on  the  present.  Thus,  I  have 
no  personal  interest  in  maintaining  that  the  moral 
criterion  is  not  applicable  in  the  way  that  Comte  holds; 
but  actually  I  do  not  find  it  applicable  in  that  way.  If 
any  one  has  more  decidedly  the  impulses  of  a  specialist, 
I  think  he  has  a  right  to  follow  them.  Minute  curiosity, 
w.  E.  3 


34  END   AND   LAW   IN   ETHICS  [CH. 

or  the  attraction  of  some  special  kind  of  beauty,  without 
any  obvious  human  interest,  may  be  the  motives  under 
which  he  can  best  work ;  and  it  is  really  a  question  of  right. 
A  case  exactly  to  the  purpose  is  that  of  Roger  Bacon. 
It  is  quite  possible  that,  from  any  social  point  of  view, 
what  was  needed  in  the  thirteenth  century  was  not  the 
direction  of  thought  to  physical  science.  None  the  less, 
I  hold  that  the  restriction  of  his  scientific  researches  by 
authority  was  absolutely  a  wrong.  What  his  own  motives 
were  is  quite  irrelevant  to  the  question  of  right.  He  may 
have  been  seeking  his  highest  good  in  the  satisfaction 
of  curiosity.  He  may,  like  Francis  Bacon  afterwards, 
have  had  a  prevision  of  the  social  services  to  be  rendered 
by  science  in  a  future  age.  If  he  had  this  prevision,  it 
may  have  been  accompanied  by  philanthropic  emotion  or 
by  pure  indifference.  In  any  case,  his  right  was  not 
ethically  suppressible  by  his  Society's  as  opposed  to  his 
own  choice  of  good.  When  Comte  speaks  of  duties  as 
alone  existent  without  rights,  he  uses  a  term  to  which  he 
is  not  entitled.  If  other  persons  have  no  rights,  or  if 
Humanity  has  no  rights,  how  can  there  be  a  duty  to  serve 
them?  In  actual  fact,  the  violation  of  justice  (to  which 
Comte  personally  was  very  sensitive)  makes  a  totally 
different  impression  from  anything  we  can  derive  ethically 
from  our  own  or  any  one's  choice  of  good.  The  choice 
of  good  may  be  largely  an  affair  of  rational  preference; 
we  may  think  that  persons  who  choose  differently  fail  in 
rationality;  but,  till  the  question  of  justice  comes  in, 
there  does  not  seem  to  be  that  which  characterises  strictly 
moral  approval  or  disapproval.  This  is  really  unique; 
and  it  is  here,  I  hold,  that  the  a  priori  element  in  ethics  is 
inexpugnable. 


Ill]  END   AND   LAW   IN   ETHICS  36 

On  the  other  hand,  UtiHtarian  thinkers  are  irrefutable 
when  they  insist  on  the  emptiness  of  all  efforts  to  deduce 
actual  human  conduct  from  abstract  rights  and  duties. 
It  is  quite  true  that,  to  get  anything  out  of  their  formulae, 
the  pure  Rationalists  have  to  introduce  utilitarian  con- 
siderations (references  to  ends  or  goods)  surreptitiously. 
What  Utihtarians  cannot  get  out  of  their  ends  is  stringent 
obligation.      What  Rationalists  cannot  get  out  of   their 
forms  or  laws  is  any  actual  end  to  be  pursued.     Now  here 
I  think  comes  in  the  reconcihation.     Just  because  the 
ends  are  not  in  themselves  obligatory,  while  yet  all    the 
content  of  human  Hfe  depends  on  them,  there  is  room  for 
the  selection  of  different  ends.     But,  while  these  are  not 
pointed  out  by  the  moral  law,   the  moral  law  assigns 
limiting   conditions   of   their   pursuit.     It   is   at   certain 
critical  points,  where  these  conditions  are  definitely  in 
question,  that  strictly  moral  choice  occurs.     To  make  the 
right  or  wrong  choice  in  these  critical  cases  is  to  succeed 
or  fail  in  the  observance  of  justice  or  the  moral  law. 
Thus  there  is  no  specially  "moral  life";    but  morality  in 
the  distinctive  sense  is  of  universal  obHgation.     What  is 
sometimes  thought  to  be  the  ideally  moral  life,  namely, 
the  hfe  of  philanthropy  or  of  extended  altruism,  is  one 
ideal  direction  not  necessarily  more  moral  than  any  other. 
Psychologically  it  may  be  directed  by  love  in  the  most 
enlarged  sense ;  but  love  as  a  psychological  principle  is  not 
a  criterion,  but  is  simply  the  natural  spring  of  all  social 
action.     This  is  quite  clearly  so  if  we  include  "self-love," 
and  self-love  can  reasonably  be   included  according  to 
Comte's  sociological  view ;   for,  man  being  fundamentally 
social,  his  egoism  can  never  be  that  of  an  isolated  animal 
being ;   or  at  least  this  limit  is  reached  only  in  the  lower 

3—2 


36  END   AND   LAW   IN   ETHICS  [CH. 

order  of  criminals,  who,  as  Comte  says,  are  less  organic 
parts  of  Humanity  than  the  domestic  animals.  It  has 
often  been  noted  what  a  strong  social  element  there  is  even 
in  the  most  egoistic  ambitions ;  so  that  the  egoist  of  really 
high  intellect  usually  becomes,  whether  that  is  his  direct 
aim  or  not,  in  some  way  greatly  serviceable  to  human  life. 
It  appears  then  on  the  whole  clear  that  various  types 
may  have  the  right  to  choose  different  kinds  of  good 
and  to  pursue  them  in  their  difference,  and  that  all  may 
be  equally  moral  in  doing  this.  No  one,  however,  can 
say  that  he  has  the  right  to  disregard  justice.  This  pro- 
position is  not  merely  verbal ;  for,  as  will  be  seen,  justice 
is  not  one  end  among  others,  to  be  taken  or  left,  but 
assigns  the  conditions  under  which  all  ends  are  to  be 
pursued.  Eight  and  wrong,  in  the  strict  and  not  merely 
vague  sense,  are  predicates  of  relations  among  persons, 
and  not  of  the  total  consequences  of  an  action.  In 
human  action,  it  is  possible  to  know  right  and  wrong, 
but  impossible  to  know  what  action  will  have  the  best 
possible  consequences.  Still,  the  intelligence  that  applies 
the  moral  law,  as  well  as  the  intelligence  that  calculates 
consequences,  is  fallible;  so  that  cases  of  doubt  are 
unavoidable.  The  a  priori  moralists  have  never  been 
able  to  avoid  them  any  more  than  the  Utilitarians. 
Perhaps  it  is  the  a  priori  elements  in  moral  systems  that 
have  been  the  most  fertile  in  casuistry.  Casuistry  cannot 
be  eluded.  In  the  mode  of  reconciliation  put  forward, 
indeed,  both  consequences  and  a  priori  principles  are 
relevant  in  all  actual  decisions  as  to  v/hat  we  shall  do. 
The  position,  however,  seems  to  me  to  be  simplified 
rather  than  complicated  by  this  admission;  because  it 
leaves  relatively  few  cases  distinctively  cases  of  moral 


Ill]  END    AND    LAW    IN    ETHICS  37 

conscience.  For,  if  our  general  mode  of  life  is  compatible 
with  the  rule  of  right,  clearly  the  larger  part  of  what  we 
have  to  consider  depends  on  consequences,  and  the  means 
to  learning  these  is  knowledge  and  practice  in  our  own 
mode  of  life:  we  have  not  to  be  considering  at  every 
moment  the  bearings  of  our  ethical  code.  Stringency  of 
the  doctrine  in  one  aspect  can  thus  coexist  with  the  highest 
degree  of  spontaneity  on  the  part  of  the  individual  in 
choosing  and  following  the  good. 

The  generalised  doctrine  of  right  or  justice  I  propose 
to  call  distinctively  Abstract  Ethics.  The  pursuit  of 
good  in  its  detail  may  be  called  the  Art  of  Life,  but  in 
reality  this  consists  of  many  arts,  instinctive,  empirical, 
or  deduced  from  some  branch  or  branches  of  science  as 
the  case  may  be.  Concrete  or  Apphed  Ethics  is  con- 
cerned with  the  pursuit  of  good  when  it  comes  into  con- 
tact with  the  principles  of  Abstract  Ethics.  By  this 
division  the  defects  both  of  the  purely  a  priori  and  the 
purely  a  posteriori  systems  are  avoided.  The  error  of 
both,  where  they  were  in  error,  was  in  exaggerating 
the  function  of  the  moral  philosopher.  The  ideal  of 
moral  philosophy  was  supposed  to  be  the  furnishing  of 
a  code  for  daily  practice  through  the  whole  of  life.  But 
only  a  very  morbid  hfe  can  ever  be  a  perpetual  series  of 
cases  of  conscience.  The  position  of  abstract  ethics  as 
a  science  resembles  most  that  of  logic.  Thought  does 
not  go  on,  in  the  logician  any  more  than  in  any  one  else, 
as  an  apphcation  of  the  laws  of  logic ;  but  those  laws  can 
be  applied  if  necessary  as  its  test.  So  also  action  does 
not  go  on  in  the  ethical  philosopher  any  more  than  in 
any  one  else  by  way  of  regular  deduction  from  moral 
principles,  but  the  moral  law  can  be  apphed  as  its  test 


38  END    AND    LAW   IN    ETHICS  [CH.  Ill 

in  case  of  doubt;  or  if  action  is  challenged  from  outside 
as  wrong  and  not  merely  as  unwise,  its  defence  must  be 
in  terms  of  the  moral  law.  "I  did  it  for  the  best"  may 
be  accepted  as  an  excuse  when  ends  are  in  question. 
When  an  infringement  of  the  law  of  justice  is  in  question, 
it  is  not  held  to  be  an  adequate  reply. 

Abstract  Ethics  is  not  a  thing  that  remains  to  be 
constructed.  What  I  propose  to  do  next  is  to  show 
where  it  is  to  be  found.  Then  I  shall  proceed  to  develop 
the  present  distinctions  in  more  detail. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    HISTORY   OF  ABSTRACT   ETHICS 

The  foundation  of  abstract  ethics  dates  from  the 
seventeenth  century.  Though,  as  actual  precepts,  all  the 
ideas  that  constitute  it  are  to  be  met  with  in  antiquity, 
and  though  a  doctrine  hke  Stoicism  could  now  find  the 
fittest  expression  in  its  terms,  yet  all  the  ancient  systems 
may  be  called  relatively  concrete.  So  also  may  most  of 
the  ethical  systems  of  modern  times;  for  it  is  only  by 
degrees  that  the  difference  in  point  of  view  has  become 
clear;  and  it  cannot  even  be  said  that  there  has  been 
perfectly  steady  progress  to  its  recognition.  Indeed  the 
movement  in  the  nineteenth  century  rather  tended  to 
the  view  that  abstract  ethical  discussion  of  rights  and 
of  justice  could  be  nothing  but  an  affair  of  more  or 
less  convenient,  but  sometimes  dangerously  misleading, 
fictions.  We  were  concerned  with  the  ends  and  the  real 
conditions  of  conduct,  not  with  those  artificial  and  quasi- 
legal  or  quasi-mathematical  conceptions  of  the  rule  of 
right  and  the  fitness  of  things  dating  from  a  period  that 
lacked  the  historical  sense,  ignored  progress,  and  thought 
you  could  lay  down  a  law  valid  for  all  times  and  countries, 
or  even,  as  Kant  said  in  an  extravagance  of  Trans- 
cendentalism, not  merely  for  men  but  for  all  rational 
beings  in  any  possible  universe. 


40  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS       [CH. 

It  will  be  admitted  that  the  outcome  of  the  age  in 
which  this  "realistic"  current,  with  its  collective  "will 
to  "  one  thing  or  the  other  as  the  ultimate  reason,  arrived 
at  its  culmination,  has  not  exactly  been  such  as  to  con- 
demn in  advance  a  reconsideration  of  the  question  whether 
the  first  business  of  moral  philosophy  is  not  to  establish 
a  law  eternally  vahd.  I  do  not  wish,  however,  to  put  it 
rhetorically,  but  scientifically.  It  seems  to  me  demon- 
strable that,  while  the  reaction  against  the  most  typical 
statements  of  the  "absolute"  ethics  of  moral  law  were  in 
a  measure  justified,  the  great  step  taken  by  ethics  in 
modern  times  has  been  to  give  more  abstract  clearness  to 
the  statement  of  law  as  distinguished  from  end.  This 
transition,  as  it  appears  in  the  same  age,  so  also  resembles 
in  character  the  transition  from  the  "synthetic"  geometry 
of  the  ancients  to  the  analytical  geometry  of  Descartes. 
It  is  not  in  the  least  that  ancient  ethics  is  like  ancient 
geometry,  or  that  modern  abstract  ethics  is  like  modern 
analytical  geometry;  but  there  is  a  resemblance  of  re- 
lations. In  both  cases  a  definite  step  was  taken  to  a 
higher  degree  of  abstraction. 

The  true  founder  of  modern  abstract  ethics  did  not 
belong  to  the  fine  of  thinkers  classed  as  "Apriorists,"  but 
to  the  fine  of  the  great  Enghsh  Experientiahsts.  His 
ultimate  foundation  of  ethics  was  not,  indeed,  finally 
adequate.  The  only  way  in  which  it  could  be  made 
adequate  was  by  principles  expressly  stated  against  him 
in  his  own  time  by  embittered  opponents;  but  in  effect 
he  had  framed  a  new  and  more  abstract  conception  that 
could  not  permanently  be  lost.  It  was  indeed  the  very 
clearness  with  which  he  had  defined  his  conception  that 
showed  his  principles  to  be  insufficient. 


IV]  THE   HISTORY   OF   ABSTRACT   ETHICS  41 

Thus  Descartes  was  not  wrong  when,  displeased  as  he 
was  with  Hobbes's  criticisms  of  his  metaphysics,  he  saw 
in  him  the  promise  of  a  new  power  in  the  moral  sciences. 
For  the  De  Cive  (published  in  1642)  was  in  reahty  the 
outline  of  a  new  demonstrative  method  in  ethics  com- 
parable for  revolutionary  importance  to  Descartes's 
Method  and  Meditations  in  metaphysics.  As  in  the  case 
of  Descartes,  there  had  been  a  long  preparation  in  the 
intermediate  period  for  this  sudden  apparition  of  a  new 
way  of  stating  fundamental  problems.  The  preparation 
for  Descartes's  primary  reference  of  the  problem  of  know- 
ledge to  the  consciousness  of  the  thinker,  consisted  in 
the  precision  given  by  long  scholastic  manipulation  to 
conceptions  arrived  at  in  the  last  period  of  ancient  thought. 
The  preparation  for  Hobbes's  ethics  and  politics  was  the 
similar  scholastic  manipulation  of  the  generalised  positions 
underlying  the  later  Roman  law  as  put  into  form  under 
influences  from  philosophy.  Here  also  that  which  had 
been  arrived  at  as  a  result,  and  had  in  the  meantime 
been  forced  within  an  alien  framework,  was  now  liberated 
and  became  a  new  beginning  with  not  yet  revealed 
possibilities  of  future  application. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  titles  of  the  three  divisions 
of  the  De  6'we— "Libertas,"  "Imperium,"  "Religio"— 
correspond  respectively  to  the  predominant  elements  in 
what  had  been  till  then  the  three  chief  phases  in  the  past 
historical  development  of  Europe,  viz.,  Greek  and  Itahan 
city-State;  Macedonian  and  Roman  Empire;  Christian 
Theocracy.  Probably  this  was  not  in  Hobbes's  mind. 
The  order  for  him  was  not  an  order  in  time  but  a  rational 
order.  His  theoretical  scheme  was  intended  as  an  analysis 
of  the  elements  in  all  States ;   and  of  course  in  the  history 


42  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS       [CH. 

of  Europe  from  classical  antiquity  onward  we  do  not 
find  any  of  the  elements  absent  at  any  stage.  Yet  there 
are  differences  of  degree.  An  ancient  city-State  un- 
doubtedly included  dominion  and  religion ;  but  to  us 
liberty  seems  relatively  predominant  in  it  as  compared 
with  the  later  political  order  of  antiquity.  So,  in  the 
next  stage,  autocracy  did  not  exclude  all  liberty,  and  it 
sought  aid  in  the  revival  of  religion ;  but  the  dominion 
of  the  monarch  as  representing  the  State  remains 
characteristic.  Again,  under  theocracy  there  were  re- 
cognised private  and  municipal  liberties,  and  it  could  not 
subsist  without  empire  or  monarchy ;  but  what  seems  to 
us  characteristic  is  religion  newly-organised  as  a  power 
for  systematically  controlling  human  life. 

Hobbes's  age  had  been  preceded  by  the  break-down 
of  this;  and  his  political  interest  lay  in  showing  the 
necessity  of  "  Imperium " — the  dominion  of  the  national 
States  of  the  new  Europe,  best  centralised,  he  thought, 
in  national  monarchies — as  the  means  of  control.  Primi- 
tive liberty  is  an  anarchy  that  has  to  be  overcome ;  and 
religion,  as  he  knew  it  in  his  time,  seemed  to  him  a 
principle  of  strife  hostile  to  civil  order.  For  all  that, 
he  finds  it  possible  to  found  ethics  rationally,  though  not 
to  get  it  into  action,  in  an  assumed  state  of  anarchy. 
Men  are  imagined  as  at  first  relatively  isolated  beings, 
seeking  their  own  good,  but  under  no  settled  government. 
This  state  of  "liberty"  thus  means  in  practice  "war  of 
all  against  all."  Yet  there  is  a  natural  or  moral  law 
discernible  by  human  intelligence,  though  in  the  state  of 
war  no  one  can  consistently  keep  it,  because  no  one  can 
have  security  that  it  will  be  observed  by  others  reci- 
procally.    Here,   it  has  not  been  sufficiently  observed, 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  43 

Hobbes  sets  himself  free  at  the  outset  ahke  from  meta- 
physical and  naturalistic  fallacy,  from  political  and 
theological  "  heteronomy."  His  own  conception  of  moral 
or  natural  law  is  carefully  distinguished  both  from  law 
in  the  sense  of  "uniformity  of  nature"  and  from  law  in 
the  sense  of  command  by  a  political  superior  or  a  super- 
natural ruler.  Laws  of  nature  in  the  ethical  sense  he 
defines  as  "  certain  conclusions  understood  by  reason,  con- 
cerning things  to  be  done  and  left  undone^."  The  moral 
law  is  the  rule  which  all  ought  to  have  the  intention 
and  to  make  the  effort  to  observe  whenever  its  observance 
becomes  possible.  It  is  "natural"  not  as  consisting  in 
conformity  to  certain  physical  (any  more  than  meta- 
physical) reahties,  but  as  ascertainable  by  the  reason 
natural  to  men  without  other  aid.  In  order  that  the 
moral  law  may  be  actually  observed,  what  is  necessary 
is  the  security  given  by  a  government.  This  may  be 
democratic,  aristocratic  or  monarchical.  When  it  is  con- 
stituted, the  duty  of  obedience  to  it  becomes  paramount ; 
for  only  in  the  state  of  peace  as  opposed  to  the  state  of 
war  can  there  be  observance  of  the  moral  law.  Because 
the  law  cannot  be  observed  without  it,  a  dictate  of  the 
law  of  nature  is  to  seek  peace,  and,  having  obtained  it, 
not  to  lapse  into  the  state  of  war.  Fundamentally  the 
law  of  nature,  the  observance  of  which  the  State  now 
makes  possible,  is  the  law  of  justice,  summed  up  in  such 
precepts  as,  to  render  to  each  his  own,  to  keep  contracts, 
not  to  do  to  another  what  we  would  not  that  another 
should  do  to  us.  Thus  we  have  passed  from  an  un- 
restricted liberty  of  all  to  do  anything,  which  was  of 

1  De  Cive,  iii.  33:    "  conclusiones  quaedam  ratione  intellectae,   de 
agendis  et  omittendis." 


44  THE   HISTORY   OF   ABSTRACT   ETHICS       [CH. 

no  value  to  anyone  precisely  because  it  was  unrestricted, 
to  a  dominion  of  one  man  or  of  an  assembly  (either 
limited  to  a  class  or  including  the  whole  people  or  its 
representatives),  which  by  the  restraint  of  law  makes 
secure  certain  "rights"  that  are  the  residue  of  primitive 
liberty.  To  "natural  rehgion" — the  reHgion  that  might 
have  been  arrived  at  by  human  reason — Hobbes  regards 
the  notion  of  a  moral  government  of  the  universe  as 
essential :  for  it,  the  moral  laws  become  divine  commands. 
Such  a  natural  religion  would  have  offered  no  difficulty 
to  the  civil  State,  of  which  it  would  simply  have  con- 
firmed the  legislation  so  far  as  this  was  in  accordance 
with  natural  law^ ;  but,  in  deahng  ^vith  actual  religion, 
he  was  confronted  with  the  rival  claims  of  every  clergy 
to  enforce  its  own  version  of  the  Judaeo-Christian  revela- 
tion as  a  power  above  all  States.  His  method  of 
deahng  with  these  was  not  directly  to  propose  that  the 
State  should  refuse  to  recognise  any  but  natural  religion ; 
though  he  made  an  approach  to  this  in  setting  forth 
a  much  reduced  account  of  what  the  revelation  might  be 
construed  to  mean.  The  position  for  which  with  all 
his  strength  he  contended  was  that  no  coercive  authority 
on  behalf  of  any  religion,  and  no  power  of  judging  what 

^  I  do  not  think  it  is  possible  to  know  Hobbes's  ultimate  thought 
about  religion;  but  I  seem  to  find  a  reserve  in  favour  of  the  possible 
truth  of  ethical  theism. 

In  the  famous  definitions  of  Leviathan  (Part  i,  chap.  6)  he  was  of 
course  indulging  his  humour,  deliberately  accentuating  what  gave 
scandal  in  his  exaltation  of  the  State.  "  Feare  of  power  invisible,  feigned 
by  the  mind,  or  imagined  from  tales  publiquely  allowed,  Religion;  not 
allowed,  Superstition." 

In  De  Give  (xvi.  1)  he  is  at  least  not  obviously  ironical  when  he 
describes  superstition  as  having  its  source  in  "fear  without  right  reason" ; 
atheism,  in  "the  opinion  of  reason,  without  fear." 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  45 

it  meant,  should  be  exercised  by  any  but  the  civil  magis- 
trate. Ultimately,  for  rehgion  as  for  everything  else, 
there  must  be  a  power  in  the  State  with  which  the  final 
decision  rests,  and  there  can  be  no  separation  of  powers. 
In  a  commonwealth  where  a  priesthood  rules,  the 
ultimate  power  rests  with  it  in  rehgion  also  because  it 
is  in  effect  itself  the  civil  government,  not  because  it  has 
any  rights  as  against  the  State. 

Now  what  interests  us  at  present  in  Hobbes's  ethico- 
political  system  is  to  know  whence  came  historically  its 
distinctively  ethical  element.  It  has  already  become 
evident  that,  in  spite  of  his  absolutism,  he  has  to  derive 
it  from  the  state  of  hberty.  Only  thus  could  he  make 
his  morahty  really  autonomous.  But,  to  determine  how 
autonomous  morahty  had  come  to  be  the  ideal,  we  must 
review  the  historical  series  of  pohtical  types. 

Beginning  at  the  beginning,  even  those  whose  political 
sympathies  are  with  Hobbes's  republican  contemporaries 
must  admit  that  the  city-republics  of  Greece  had  some  of 
the  disadvantages  of  hberty  as  it  exists  in  the  state  of 
nature,  before  there  are  laws.  Relatively  to  modern 
governments,  their  governments  were  weak,  and  inade- 
quate to  preserve  order.  They  were  torn  by  factions 
compared  with  which  the  pohtical  parties  of  modern 
times  represent  very  mild  differences.  Most  important  of 
all,  small  as  they  were  they  could  not,  even  when  con- 
fronted with  an  outer  world  of  much  greater  magnitude 
and  of  inferior  civilisation,  arrive  at  any  permanent 
agreement  to  avoid  war  among  themselves.  Through 
Macedon  and  afterwards  through  Rome  (which  under  its 
aristocratic  Repubhc  had  coordinated  Italy)  government 
became  stronger  and  civil  security  increased  if  hberty 


46  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS        [CH. 

in  its  good  as  well  as  in  its  bad  sense  decayed.  The 
common  rule  of  many  cities  and  provinces,  under  Rome 
as  under  Macedon,  was  found  in  the  long  run  impracticable 
except  by  a  peculiar  combination  of  "Imperium"  and 
"Religio."  The  new  imperial  monarchs,  beginning  with 
Alexander,  revived  from  the  dead  or  dying  religions  of 
Babylon  and  Egypt  the  idea  of  the  king  as  divine  in- 
carnation^. When  a  new  revealed  rehgion  arose,  and  the 
system  of  the  Roman  Empire  passed  into  a  theocracy, 
the  king  or  emperor  ruled,  no  longer  indeed  as  a  "god 
manifest,"  but  as  the  vicegerent  of  the  supreme  God. 
And,  when  the  Empire,  under  barbarian  impact,  broke 
into  fragments,  the  separated  theocratic  power  (as  Hobbes 
himself  noted)  seemed  to  hold  dominion  as  the  ghost  of 
the  no  longer  existent  unity.  It  would  thus  be  obvious, 
and  not  long  since  it  would  have  been  fashionable  to  say, 
See  how  beneficent  and  how  indispensable  are  force  and 
illusion  !  Yet  it  would  not  have  been  the  deepest  truth. 
Whatever  the  world  owes  to  these  powers,  it  does  not 
owe  to  them  the  essential  thing  in  ethics. 

Of  this,  though  of  course  nothing  exactly  like  his 
"state  of  nature"  ever  existed,  the  historic  origin  was 
not  unlike  that  which  was  postulated  by  Hobbes.  In  the 
ancient  cities  there  was,  as  everywhere  among  men,  the 
pursuit  of  ends,  which  for  simplicity  may  be  considered, 
as  Hobbes  considered  it,  egoistic.  This  was  regulated  by 
customary  laws  {vofxoi),  about  the  origin  of  which  it 
must    be    left   to    anthropologists    to    form    conjectures. 

^  See,  for  a  history  of  the  process  in  the  case  of  the  Macedonian 
monarchies,  Greek  Imperialism  (1913),  by  Professor  W.  Scott  Ferguson. 
I  cannot,  however,  follow  the  writer  in  admitting  an  important  influence 
from  Aristotle  in  Alexander's  assumption  of  divinity. 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  47 

Whatever  this  may  have  been,  they  could  not  retain 
their  sanctity  in  a  world  where  there  was  constant  com- 
parison with  different  customary  laws  and  constant 
discussion  among  ingenious  minds  occupied  with  moral 
and  political  questions.  Meanwhile,  the  philosophers 
thought  out  moral  systems  in  relation  to  their  conceptions 
of  the  true  good  of  man ;  but  evidently  these  could  not 
dominate  whole  communities.  Thus  we  are  confronted 
with  the  phenomena  of  dissolution  usually  ascribed  to 
decay  of  belief.  But,  while  customary  law  and  ethics 
had  been  breaking  down  and  the  philosophic  schools  had 
only  been  able  to  construct  systems  for  a  few  to  live  by, 
the  result  of  the  existence  of  free  States  with  their  de- 
liberative assemblies  and  their  law  courts,  in  which  also 
the  method  was  debate,  had  been  the  evolution  of  another 
kind  of  law  whereby  the  inevitable  conflicts  of  interest 
among  individuals  pursuing  their  own  good  were  adjusted 
according  to  norms  that  all  could  recognise  as  apphcable. 
This  process,  begun  in  Greece,  was  more  systematically 
carried  forward  by  the  Roman  jurists.  As  historians 
allow,  its  basis  was  essentially  laid  under  the  Roman 
RepubUc.  Under  the  monarchy,  the  original  impulse 
having  been  given  before,  development  could  go  on  by 
deductive  logic  and  consultation  of  precedents.  Thus, 
when  free  political  life  had  ceased,  the  autocrat  became  the 
organ  of  the  moral  law  imphcit  in  the  legal  codes.  That 
this  was  the  real  value  of  the  monarchy  was  pointed  out 
by  later  philosophers,  who  regarded  it  as  in  this  respect 
replacing  the  want  of  sufficient  virtue  in  the  multitude. 
As  has  been  already  suggested,  this  view  is  quite  in 
accordance  with  the  essential  thought  of  Hobbes ;  though 
it  would  not  have  suited  his  polemical  purpose  to  put  it 


48  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS        [CH. 

exactly  in  that  way.  For  Hobbes,  conceiving  the  moral 
law  as  a  system  of  rules  capable  of  being  worked  out, 
though  not  applied,  by  rational  men  even  in  a  state  of 
anarchy,  never  anywhere  treats  either  government  or 
religion  as  the  creator  of  morality.  In  his  view,  one  who 
observes  the  law  only  because  of  punishments  or  rewards, 
whether  natural  or  supernatural,  is  not  truly  moral. 

Doubtless  in  this  historical  development  the  con- 
ception of  justice  had  become  in  a  manner  externalised. 
When,  in  the  statement  of  the  moral  law,  the  command 
of  a  sovereign,  human  or  divine,  was  placed  at  the  summit, 
and  "sanctions"  were  brought  constantly  into  view  as 
the  means  of  enforcing  it  in  the  absence  of  inward  dis- 
position; when,  moreover,  freedom  of  discussion  was 
limited  to  deductions  from  what  was  given ;  it  is  evident 
that  we  can  no  longer  expect  such  impressive  appeals  to 
eternal  right  as  we  find  in  the  Attic  drama.  Yet  the 
real  spring  of  the  development  was  in  the  self-evidence 
of  this  inward  law  beyond  sanctions;  and  Hobbes,  in 
spite  of  his  paradoxes  in  laying  down  the  duty  of  un- 
quahfied  obedience  to  the  sovereign,  has  as  clear  a  view 
of  it  essentially  as  any  one.  Nowhere  did  he  make  this 
clearer  than  when  he  expressly  put  another  selected 
formula  by  the  side  of  a  formula  authorised  by  rehgion. 
It  may  seem,  he  says,  at  first  sight  difficult  to  know 
whether  any  proposed  action  is  or  is  not  in  accordance 
with  the  laws  of  nature,  these  having  been  deduced 
by  an  artificial  process  from  their  tendency  to  our 
conservation.  There  is,  however,  an  easy  rule.  Let 
any  one,  when  in  doubt  whether  that  which  he  is 
about  to  do  to  another  is  in  accordance  with  natural 
law    or    not,    conceive    himself    in    that    other's    place. 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  49 

"Atque  haec  regula  non  modo  facilis,  sed  etiam  dudum 
celebrata  liis  verbis  est,  quod  tihi  fieri  non  vis,  alteri  ne 
feceris'^."  Here  he  deKberately  chooses  the  negative 
form  of  the  law  of  reciprocity  (found  for  example  in 
Isocrates) :  "  Do  not  to  another  what  you  would  not 
that  another  should  do  to  you."  The  positive  form 
given  in  the  Gospel  (Matt.  vii.  12),  he  remarks^,  is 
"almost  in  the  same  words"  (totidem  pene  verbis);  thus 
dissociating  the  precept  of  natural  justice  from  any 
intrinsic  dependence  on  a  divine  command.  The  rule 
that  we  are  to  keep  our  contracts  is  similarly  made  prior 
to  the  pact  or  covenant  into  which  the  chosen  people  of 
God  was  said  to  enter.  The  promise  in  Deuteronomy^ 
made  by  the  people  to  observe  the  law  of  Moses  is  treated 
as  a  particular  case  of  a  contract,  the  meaning  and 
obligations  of  which  are  to  be  determined  by  an  application 
of  the  general  principles  of  natural  justice.  The  law,  to 
love  your  neighbour  as  yourself,  that  is,  as  Hobbes 
interprets  it,  to  recognise  his  equal  right,  to  imagine 
yourself  in  his  place  when  you  are  free  from  passion, 
existed  even  before  Moses:  "for  it  is  the  natural  law, 
having  its  beginning  with  the  rational  nature  itself*." 
Thus    Hobbes's    conception    of    moraUty,    as    Groom 

1  De  Cive,  iii.  26. 

2  Ibid.,  iv.  23. 

'  Hobbes  anticipated  the  whole  course  of  Biblical  criticism  from 
Spinoza  onward  to  the  most  recent  schools  in  declaring  Deuteronomy 
the  earliest  book  of  the  Law  {De  Cive,  xvi.  12). 

*  De  Cive,  xvii.  8.  Cf.  xvii.  13,  where  the  distinction  is  still 
more  expressly  drawn  between  the  teaching  of  justice  and  observation 
of  the  natural  laws  "ut  theoremata  per  rationem  naturalem ;  deducendo 
jus  et  leges  naturales  a  principiis  contractibusque  humanis"  and  "ut 
leges  per  auctoritatem  divinam,  ostendendo  talem  esse  voluntatem 
Dei." 

w.  E.  4 


50  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS        [CH. 

Robertson  has  said^,  does  not  exclude  "anything  that 
the  consciousness  of  mankind  recognises  as  duty  or 
virtue  in  the  individual."  Altruism  as  a  spring  of 
obedience  to  the  moral  law  is  on  occasion  recognised^. 
"Right  reason,"  on  which  his  contemporary  opponents 
took  their  stand,  is  constantly  declared  to  be  existent 
prior  to  positive  law.  Although  the  supreme  power, 
once  constituted,  is  absolute,  and  no  right  of  rebellion 
can  be  recognised  in  subjects,  yet  it  is  the  duty  of  those 
who  hold  the  supreme  power  to  obey  right  reason^.  The 
ethical  laws  of  nature  are  immutable  and  eternal*.  Even 
between  States  they  remain  vahd  as  "divine  law,"  though 
they  cannot  be  enforced^.  How  then  was  it  that  his 
system  became  for  a  time  so  discredited  morally? 

The  causes  were  not  entirely  inherent  in  the  real 
character  of  the  system.  Unfairness  and  prejudice  were 
not  absent  even  in  an  opponent  of  high  philosophic  power 

1  Hohhes,  p.  143. 

2  De  Cive,  xviii.  3:  "qui  amant  proximum,  non  possunt  non  velle 
obedire  legi  morali,  quae  consistit,  ut  supra  capite  tertio  ostensum 
est,  in  superbiae,  ingratitudinis,  contumeliae,  inhumanitatis,  inclementiae, 
injuriae  similiumque  offensarum  prohibitione,  quibus  proximi  laeduntur." 

^  Ibid.,  xiii.  2:  ''officii  tamen  eorum  est  rectae  rationi,  quae  lex  est 
naturalis  moralis  et  divina,  quantum  possunt  in  omnibus  obedire." 

*  Ibid.,  iii.  29:  "Leges  naturae  immutabiles  et  aeternae  sunt:  quod 
vetant,  nunquam  licitum  esse  potest:  quod  jubent,  nunquam  illici- 
tum." 

*  Ibid.,  xiv.  5:  "Humana  lex  omnis  civilis  est.  Nam  extra  civi- 
tates  status  hominum  hostilis  est;  in  quo,  quia  alter  alteri  non  sub- 
jicitur,  leges  praeter  dictamina  rationis  naturalis,  quae  lex  divina  est, 
nullae  sunt."  Hobbes's  exclusion  of  the  thought  of  an  international 
law  is  thus  less  absolute  than  Spinoza's  (see  Tractatus  Politicus,  iii. 
13,  14).  Spinoza,  on  the  other  hand,  in  incorporating  the  general 
positions  of  Hobbes,  makes  clear,  as  Hobbes  did  not,  the  limits  beyond 
which  a  tyrannic  power  will  find  itself  unable  to  enforce  civil  obedience 
within  the  State. 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  51 

like  Cudworth.  Yet  it  remains  true  that  Hobbes  could 
not  ultimately  justify  his  own  conception  of  virtue  and 
duty  in  their  inwardness  by  the  reasons  he  gives.  Justice, 
in  his  view,  is  most  certainly  not  merely  prudence; 
yet,  if  it  could  be  explained  wholly  on  his  principles  as 
the  means  adapted  to  the  end  he  assigns,  that  is  what 
it  would  be  reduced  to.  It  is  of  course  quite  true  that  the 
enforcement  of  certain  rules  of  justice  by  the  State  is  the 
means  to  "peace  and  defence,"  and  that  it  is  on  the  whole 
to  the  interest  of  every  individual  that  the  State  should 
be  strong  enough  to  enforce  them.  Thus  Hobbes,  by 
assuming  a  primeval  conflict  of  egoistic  interests,  and  by 
supposing  men  rational  enough  to  seek  a  way  of  ad- 
justing the  perpetual  strife  that  would  otherwise  go  on, 
can  furnish  a  ground  for  the  construction  of  a  common- 
wealth and  its  laws.  If,  however,  we  put  the  case  as  it 
concerns  the  individual,  and  ask  why  any  person  should 
observe  the  rule  when  he  can  clearly  see  that  in  the 
particular  case  it  is  not  to  his  interest  and  can  be  evaded 
with  impunity,  what  is  the  answer  simply  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  only  ultimate  end  theoretically  admitted, 
viz.,  egoistic  interest?  A  later  way  of  meeting  the 
objection  on  Hobbes's  experientiahst  principles  was  by 
means  of  a  modified  psychology,  in  which  more  account  is 
taken  than  by  Hobbes  of  the  altruistic  elements  in  human 
nature  as  a  normal,  and  not  merely  exceptional  and 
incalculable,  spring  of  action.  But  suppose  these  to 
exist  in  fact,  in  what  consists  even  then  the  strict  obliga- 
tion to  observe  the  moral  law?  Hobbes  and  his  con- 
temporaries, being  in  general  "  intellectualists,"  would 
have  at  once  admitted  the  validity  of  Kant's  argument 
against  founding  ethics  simply  on  benevolence;    that  no 

4—2 


\ 


62  THE   HISTORY   OF   ABSTRACT   ETHICS       [CH. 

one  can  be  obliged  to  feel  in  a  certain  way.  In  fact 
Hobbes  had  put  this  in  his  own  manner:  the  moral 
obhgation  is  to  an  action,  or,  from  the  internal  and  more 
properly  ethical  point  of  view,  to  an  intention  and  efiort, 
not  to  a  feeling.  The  question  then  is,  whether  a  person 
has  not  strictly  a  right  on  Hobbes's  principles,  should  he 
happen  to  be  in  feeling  a  pure  egoist,  to  ignore  the  interests 
of  the  commonwealth  in  every  case  where  they  do  not 
include  his  own.  And  we  must  not  of  course  suppose 
a  mere  blunderer,  who  is  sure  to  overreach  himself,  but 
a  man  of  insight  who  sees  his  way  clear  to  profitable 
injustice.  It  was  in  considerations  of  this  kind  that 
Cudworth's  attack  on  Hobbes's  moral  and  political 
system  was  ultimately  based.  No  doubt  he  had  in  view 
the  dramatic  representation  of  this  type  of  thinking 
by  Plato,  and  its  attempted  self- justification  by  ideas 
superficially  resembling  those  of  Hobbes.  His  own  aim 
was  to  place  the  moral  law  above  everything  even  in 
appearance  arbitrary.  As  a  Platonising  theologian,  he 
held  the  intellect  to  be  prior  to  the  will  of  God.  The 
moral  law  is  a  divine  command  because  it  is  right;  it  is 
not  right  because  commanded.  Similarly  political  com- 
mand is  in  the  second  place  in  relation  to  the  law  of 
justice  as  intellectually  discerned.  Now  although  this, 
if  we  look  closely,  is  in  effect  conceded  by  Hobbes,  his 
system  certainly  gave  a  different  impression.  It  seemed 
as  if  justice  in  his  view  was  finally  identical  with  the  will 
of  the  State,  and  even  as  if  the  State  could  make  a 
doctrine  true  or  false,  in  the  only  meaning  those  words 
can  practically  bear,  at  its  arbitrary  will.  Some  of  this 
was  deliberate  paradox  to  strike  the  public  mind;  and 
undoubtedly  it  had  that  effect.     On   one  side  it  was 


IV]  THE   HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT   ETHICS  53 

regarded  with  real  or  assumed  horror;  and  on  the  other 
side  a  kind  of  "immorahsm,"  having  for  its  watchword 
"power,"  hke  that  with  which  we  have  become  recently 
famihar,  took  pleasure  in  calling  itself  "Hobbism."  Thus 
historically  the  reaction  of  Cud  worth  and  the  Cambridge 
Platonists  was  justified,  and  we  have  to  inquire  more 
exactly  what  it  meant  and  how  far  it  succeeded  or  failed. 
Essentially  it  meant  that  the  moral  law,  conceived  as 
a  law  of  justice,  is  ultimately  a  priori.  This  could  be 
argued  without  great  difl&culty  from  the  concessions  of 
Hobbes,  who  indeed  anticipated  the  title  of  Cudworth's 
Treatise  concerning  Eternal  and  Immutable  Morality  in 
what  he  says  himself  of  the  moral  law ;  which  is  for  him 
also,  as  we  have  seen,  an  immutable  and  eternal  law  of 
right  reason.  It  was  only  necessary  to  show  that  the 
experiential  ground  is  insufficient.  Now  the  sufficiency  of 
Hobbes's  proof  a  posteriori,  apart  from  external  criticism, 
is  quite  invalidated  by  incidental  remarks  of  his  own; 
such  as,  that  animals  "  non  distinguunt  injuriam  a 
damno^,"  and  that  men  are  so  difficult  to  govern  precisely 
because  they  do  make  this  distinction.  For  it  necessarily 
follows  that  the  distinction  is  not  a  consequence  of  the 
command  of  a  political  superior.  If  then,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  all  education  in  the  principles  of  social  justice 
is  and  must  be  an  affair  of  authorised  tradition,  the  idea 
of  injustice  as  distinguished  from  loss  or  damage  can 
nevertheless  be  turned  against  the  State  itself,  how,  it 
may  be  asked,  can  this  idea  be  other  than  a  priori  ?  For 
it  is  quite  inexpHcable  as  a  mere  subjective  fancy  of 
particular  minds.  The  notion  of  having  suffered  in- 
justice in  a  particular  case  may,  it  is  true,  be  a  mere 

^  De  Cive,  v.  5. 


54  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS        [CH. 

fancy;  but  there  remains  irremovable  the  constant 
possibiHty  of  appeal  to  this  generalised  idea  under  which 
alone  the  particular  case  becomes  arguable.  Morality, 
then,  is  ultimately  irreducible  to  a  balance  of  gain  and 
loss.  Underivable,  as  we  saw,  from  direct  egoistic  cal- 
culation, it  is  also  underivable  mediately  from  poUtical 
command. 

In  the  polemic  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists,  however, 
the  purely  ethical  criticism  of  Hobbes's  foundation  of 
morals  was  never  quite  disentangled  from  the  meta- 
physical criticism  of  his  mechanical  or  "corporealist" 
system  of  speculative  doctrine.  With  Cudworth's  suc- 
cessor Samuel  Clarke,  the  same  attachment  of  the  moral 
law  to  the  idea  of  theoretical  truth  remained.  Both 
alike  were  unable  to  escape,  as  Hobbes  had  already 
escaped,  from  the  "metaphysical  fallacy."  Hobbes  re- 
garded his  "civil  philosophy"  as  capable  of  standing  on 
its  basis  in  the  doctrine  of  human  nature,  without  refer- 
ence to  the  mechanical  philosophy  which  formed  the  first 
part  of  the  complete  system  he  had  planned  and  partly 
worked  out.  They,  on  the  contrary,  thought  that,  to 
provide  a  basis  for  their  ethics,  they  must  first  overthrow 
materiahsm  and  establish  a  spiritualist  metaphysic  on 
principles  of  pure  reason.  Hence  Cud  worth,  in  par- 
ticular, spent  most  of  his  force  on  preliminaries.  Not 
only  must  materialism  in  all  its  phases  be  refuted  so 
far  as  it  claimed  to  give  an  account  of  the  whole ;  but  at 
the  same  time  the  "true  intellectual  system  of  the 
universe"  must  incorporate  what  was  sound  in  the 
physical  doctrine  of  ancient  and  modern  atomists.  On 
another  side  there  was  rising  a  new  Protagorean  sub- 
jectivism, denying  all  knowledge  as  distinguished  from 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  55 

opinion.  This  too  must  be  refuted,  as  Plato  had  set 
himself  to  refute  Protagoras.  The  general  result  was, 
not  indeed  a  mere  waste  of  power,  for  Cudworth's  work 
had  effect,  but  certainly  an  expenditure  of  thought  and 
learning  that  on  the  whole  seemed  to  miss  the  mark 
through  over-elaborateness.  Though  he  was  undoubtedly 
driving  at  the  thought  of  an  "autonomous  ethics,"  he 
did  not  succeed  in  getting  it  adequately  formulated.  It 
was  with  him  an  original  thought,  stimulated  by  opposition 
to  Hobbes  and  going  beyond  what  had  been  expressed 
by  his  Neo-Platonic  masters;  but,  while  the  moral  law 
was  by  him  set  definitely  against  self-interest  or  arbitrary 
will,  he  had  not  arrived  at  a  clear  understanding  that  it 
was  independent  of  intellectual  truth  about  being.  On 
the  metaphysical  side  he  was  more  definitely  than  in 
ethics  a  disciple  rather  than  a  discoverer ;  so  that  it  was 
left  to  Berkeley  to  find  a  more  modern  way  against  the 
"  corporealists."  In  ethics,  his  direction  v/as  followed  in 
England  only  by  thinkers  of  the  second  order.  The  next 
effective  step  towards  founding  the  type  of  doctrine  to 
which  he  had  aspired  was  not  taken  before  Kant. 

During  the  eighteenth  century,  new  development  was 
given,  in  the  systems  called  utilitarian,  to  the  doctrine 
that  makes  ends  supreme.  Partly  in  subordination  and 
partly  in  opposition  to  this  general  doctrine,  various 
investigations  were  carried  forward  in  the  psychology  of 
ethics,  as  distinguished  from  ethics  proper.  Usually  with 
Hobbes  in  view  as  an  opponent,  the  disinterested  and 
benevolent  as  contrasted  with  the  selfish  elements  in 
human  nature  were  brought  out.  Theories  of  "moral 
sense,"  "conscience,"  "sympathy,"  were  set  against  the 
doctrines  that  tended  to  make  moral  conduct  an  affair  of 


56  THE   HISTORY   OF   ABSTRACT   ETHICS       [CH. 

calculation.  So  in  later  times  we  have  had  theories  of 
"intuition,"  ascribing  merit  to  an  action  according  to 
the  psychological  rank  of  the  motive  from  which  it 
proceeds.  All  these  doctrines  have  their  value  and  in- 
terest, for  all  start  from  the  description  of  something 
that  exists  in  human  nature,  however  they  may  explain 
it;  but  none  could  seriously  compete  with  Utilitarianism 
in  the  claim  to  furnish  a  standard.  All  the  principles, 
including  conscience,  the  most  impressive,  have  the 
fault  that  they  are  "subjective"  in  the  sense  of  varying 
from  individual  to  individual.  No  doubt  we  ought 
to  obey  conscience;  but  how  are  we  to  form  our 
conscience?  Of  the  origin  of  conscience,  theories  are 
endless. 

Love  is  too  young  to  know  what  conscience  is; 
Yet  who  knows  not  conscience  is  born  of  love? 

That  is  one  theory,  and  it  may  be  regarded  as  the  zenith ; 
but  actual  consciences  are  very  varied,  and  no  doubt  it 
would  be  true  to  say  that  some  have  their  spring  in  fear. 
Conscience  therefore,  Hke  the  other  principles  referred  to, 
belongs  to  "anthropology"  in  Kant's  sense.  He  was  not 
without  interest  in  this;  and  he  did  not  at  all  deny  the 
merits  of  the  psychological  moralists  of  his  century;  but 
he  could  find  in  them  no  solution  of  his  own  problem, 
which  he  had  clearly  conceived  as  that  of  finding  a  rational 
a  priori  law.  Of  the  major  systems  that  had  preceded 
his  own,  that  of  Hume  is  of  course  in  principle  entirely 
governed  by  the  idea  of  end.  It  was  by  his  criticism  of 
metaphysics  and  theology,  not  by  his  ethics  of  "bene- 
volent utilitarianism,"  that  Hume  influenced  Kant.  This 
type  of  doctrine  Kant  had  constantly  in  view,  but  simply 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  57 

as  a  type,  not  in  its  subtleties.     To  him  it  was  the  great 
opposing  doctrine,  which  it  was  his  aim  to  supersede. 

To  understand  the  essential  principles  of  Kant's  ethics, 
the  best  book  to  read  is  the  Grundlegung  zur  Metaphysik 
der  Sitten  (1785),  which  he  wrote  before  the  Kritik  der 
praktischen  Vernunft  (1788)  in  order  to  dispose  in  advance 
of  certain  strictly  scientific  questions.  The  Practical 
Reason  is  properly  an  episodic  treatise  on  metaphysics  in 
so  far  as  determined  by  ethics.  The  later  Metaphysik 
der  Sitten  (1797)^  is  a  return  to  the  details  of  ethics  in 
greater  complexity,  and  in  effect  set  free  from  all  attach- 
ment to  any  speculative  position. 

For  the  title  Metaphysic  of  Morals  must  not  mislead 
us.  Kant  was  as  free  from  the  "metaphysical"  as  from 
the  "  naturahstic  "  fallacy.  And  he  was  free  consciously. 
By  "metaphysic  of  ethics"  he  did  not  mean  a  speculative 
doctrine  about  reality,  on  which  the  theory  of  practice 
was  to  be  founded,  but  a  "first  philosophy"  of  ethics 
itself,  bringing  out  the  principles  essential  to  the  con- 
stitution of  any  rational  system  of  morals.  Thus  he  made 
a  genuinely  new  departure;  for,  while  some  others  had 
been  free  from  the  actual  fallacies,  no  one  before  had 
set  himself  to  realise,  in  deliberate  contrast  to  everything 
else,  the  idea  of  what  ought  to  be,  independently  ahke 
of  the  physical  sciences,  of  anthropology  and  of  theology. 
Kant  holds  his  ethical  doctrine  to  be  true  on  any 
supposition  whatever  as  to  the  constitution  of  the  uni- 
verse. It  is  as  true  on  the  hypothesis  of  atheism  as  of 
theism ;  though  in  the  Critique  of  Practical  Reason  it  is 
made  the  ground  for  postulating  theism.     It  is  as  true  for 

^  Comprising  the  Metaphysische  Anfangsgrilnde  der  JRechtslehre  and 
the  Metaphysische  AnfangsgrUnde  der  Tugeyidlehre. 


58  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS        [CH. 

all  other  rational  beings,  if  any  exist,  as  for  men.  If  we 
start  from  the  matter  of  the  will,  the  end,  and  not  from 
its  form,  the  law,  then  there  are  no  metaphysical  prin- 
ciples of  ethics ;  but  the  theory  of  virtue  is  then  corrupted 
at  its  source^.  The  true  basis  of  ethics  is  thought,  not 
feeling.  What  we  have  to  aim  at  is  the  statement  of 
certain  universal  maxims  for  the  conduct  of  all  rational 
beings.  The  supreme  maxim  cannot  be  merely  hypo- 
thetical: Act  in  such  and  such  a  way  if  you  desire  a 
certain  end  (say,  the  happiness  of  mankind).  It  must  be 
categorical.  The  first  form  in  which  Kant  states  it  is 
the  famous  "categorical  imperative":  Act  according  to 
the  maxim  that  can  at  the  same  time  be  made  universal 
law. 

After  more  than  a  century  of  discussion,  the  verdict 
of  criticism  seems  to  be  that  this  is  too  purely  formal  to 
enable  us  to  proceed  to  any  propositions  whatever  re- 
lating to  ends.  Yet  Kant's  system,  in  his  own  view, 
stands  or  falls  according  as  this  passage  is  or  is  not  prac- 
ticable. From  the  form  of  the  moral  law,  we  must  be 
able  to  arrive  at  propositions  that  can  positively  determine 
actual  conduct  in  its  ends.  If  this  were  true  without 
qualification,  I  think  we  should  have  to  conclude  that 
Kant's  ethical  doctrine  has  failed,  for  no  ends  are  de- 
ducible  from  mere  formal  law.  I  have  indicated,  however, 
in  what  manner  his  position  seems  to  me  to  remain 
valid.  We  must  recognise  that  the  moral  law  could  not 
exist  at  all  except  for  beings  pursuing  ends,  and  that 
these  ends  can  be  determined  only  by  experience.  The 
moral  law  therefore  implies  them,  and  does  not  assign 
them.  But,  if  the  ends  cannot  be  deduced  from  the  law, 
^  Metaphysische  Anfangsgrilnde  der  Tugendlehre,  Vorrede. 


rv]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  59 

neither  can  the  law,  in  all  its  stringency,  be  deduced  from 
the  ends.  This  stringency  is  finally  inexplicable  from 
pure  experience. 

On  the  other  hand,  Kant's  "pure  will"  or  "good  will," 
considered  formally  as  the  mere  will  to  obey  the  moral 
law,  can  by  itself  determine  no  action  whatever.  Utili- 
tarianism, in  the  generahsed  sense  that  some  good  is 
the  end,  is  the  necessary  method  for  determining  actual 
conduct.  We  must  recognise  this  openly,  not  bring  in 
utilitarian  considerations  surreptitiously,  as  Kant  does  in 
trying  to  construct  a  working  system  for  the  life  of  man 
out  of  pure  forms. 

Even  as  a  formal  principle,  Kant's  categorical  im- 
perative seems  to  me  to  retain  httle  value.  Professor 
Juvalta  (whose  criticism  will  be  found  set  forth  in  more 
detail  in  the  next  chapter)  makes  the  observation,  which 
is  exactly  to  the  point,  that  it  fails  to  exclude  some  modes 
of  life  generally  regarded  as  immoral,  and  would  exclude 
some  that  are  admitted  to  be  moral,  whatever  other 
objection  might  be  taken  to  them.  For  the  ruthless 
pursuit  of  power  is  quite  compatible  with  the  maxim, 
provided  you  do  not  complain  when  beaten,  while  the 
mode  of  hfe  of  St  Francis  of  Assisi  is  not.  One  of  the 
Kantian  maxims,  however,  he  allows,  does  go  beyond  a 
mere  empty  formalism.  Now  this,  while  itself  formal, 
complies  with  the  condition  stated  above.  Making  no 
end  part  of  the  maxim,  it  yet  recognises  that  man  as  the 
subject  of  the  moral  law  is  a  being  pursuing  ends.  So 
act  (the  maxim  runs)  as  to  treat  humanity,  in  thy  own 
person  as  well  as  in  the  person  of  every  other,  always  at 
the  same  time  as  an  end,  never  as  a  mere  means. 

This  formula,  Kant  himself  insists,  is  much  more  than 


60  THE   HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT   ETHICS       [CH. 

"the  trivial,  quod  tihi  non  vis  fieri,  etc.";    for  under  it 
positive  duties  can  be  brought,  as  they  cannot  be  brought 
under  a  merely  negative  formula^.     This  might  lead  to 
a  good  deal  of  dialectic.     First  it  could  be  remarked 
that  the  law  of  contradiction  also  is  negative  and  may  be 
called  trivial;    but  that  no  one  save  a  philosopher  ever 
seriously  tries  to  carry  it  through  the  various  portions 
of  his  thinking  in  their  mutual  relations;    and   that  no 
system  of  philosophy  that  exists  has  been  able  to  bear 
its  thoroughgoing  application.     Still,  it  could  be  said  in 
reply  that  the  law  of  contradiction,  though  necessary,  is 
not  sufficient  to  constitute  even  a  system  of  logic,  let 
alone  a  system  of  philosophy;    and  that  similarly,  the 
negative  form  of  the  law  of  reciprocity,  though  necessary, 
is   not   sufficient   even   to   make   action   formally   right. 
Without  further  discussion  I  am  myself  ready  to  admit 
that    Kant's    maxim    regarding    the    mutual    respect   of 
persons  for  one  another  as  ends  and  not  mere  means  is 
well  entitled  to  a  place  of  its  own  as  a  classical  expression 
of  the  idea  of  justice  for  a  society  in  which  freedom  is 
explicitly  recognised.     The  negative  formula  selected  by 
Hobbes,  applying  to  societies  of  all  types,  has  less  content. 
The  corresponding  positive  formula,  Do  to  others  as  you 
would  that  others  should  do  to  you,  is  of  course  logically 
no   more   than   equivalent   to   the  negative   formula.     I 
think  it  has  been  said  with  truth  that  whenever  it  appears 
to  mean  more  it  is  wrong.     Gibbon  found  the  negative 
maxim  (from  Isocrates)  the  most  apt  to  quote  against 
religious  persecution.     Certainly  it  would  be  more  difficult 
to  reconcile  in  appearance  with  the  negative  than  with  the 

^  Grundlegung  zur  Metaphysik  der  Sitten  {Werke,  Berlin,  G.  Reimer, 
Bd.  iv.  1903,  p.  430  note). 


rv]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  61 

positive  formula  that  which  has  been  called  "persecution 
from  love^." 

If  Kant  himself  prefers  the  apparently  most  uni- 
versalised  maxim,  called  distinctively  the  categorical 
imperative,  to  a  maxim  that  recognises  exphcitly  the 
existence  of  ends,  this,  I  think,  characterises  the  attempt 
to  do  more  with  pure  form  than  will  ever  be  possible. 
The  merit  of  the  second  maxim  is  that,  while  it  still  has 
the  formal  character  of  a  priori  law,  it  points  to  the  kind 
of  matter  (that  is,  the  ends  of  persons),  though  not  to  any 
particular  matter,  to  which  it  is  applicable.  A  third 
formulation,  in  which  it  is  laid  down  that  moral  legislation 
must  be  imposed  by  the  will  on  itself  (autonomy  as  against 
heteronomy)  serves  to  bring  out  still  more  clearly  the 
conditions  of  a  moral  personality.  The  instabihty  of 
Kant's  own  position  in  so  far  as  it  claims  to  be  pure 
rationahsm  is  revealed  when  he  says:  How  pure  reason 
can  be  for  itself  practical,  that  is,  how  the  mere  principle 
of  the  universal  validity  of  all  its  maxims  as  laws,  without 
any  materially  interesting  object  of  the  will,  can  itself 
bring  into  operation  a  purely  moral  interest,  no  human 
reason  can  explain^.  The  solution,  I  have  already  sug- 
gested, is  that  there  is  nothing  precisely  of  this  kind  for 
it  to  explain.  All  rational  action  is  and  must  be  with 
a  view  to  ends  thought  as  goods.  The  abstract  moral  law, 
which  is  the  law  of  justice,  is  a  hmiting  condition  in  the 
pursuit  of  ends.  That  is  how  the  recognition  of  it  modifies 
action;  not  by  the  determination  of  a  special  class  of 
positive  actions  that  may  be  called  moral  in  distinction 

^  Whether  this  aberration  of  benevolence  ever  existed  I  express  no 
opinion.  A  magnificent  representation  of  it  is  to  be  found  in  Victor 
Hugo's  Torquemada.  ^  Loc.  cit.  p.  461. 


62 


THE   HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS        [CH. 


from  others.  Even  the  special  aim  of  promoting  pubUc 
justice — the  aim  of  the  kings  and  rulers  beatified  in 
Dante's  Heaven  of  Jupiter — is  simply  a  mode  of  the 
fulfilment  of  duty  in  a  given  position:  it  is  not  more 
moral  in  itself,  though  it  may  be  nobler  or  more  meri- 
torious, than  any  other  fulfilment.  What  always  deter- 
mines a  rational  action  is  the  notion  of  a  good  for  oneself 
or  others.  The  enforcement  of  justice,  for  example, 
may  be  regarded  as  a  good  for  the  commonwealth,  and 
to  promote  it  as  a  form  of  altruism.  Any  action,  whether 
altruistic  or  egoistic,  and  whether  positively  meritorious 
or  not,  may  be  called  moral  when  it  does  not  infringe  the 
laws  of  justice,  conceived  of  course  in  the  ethical  and  not 
merely  in  the  legal  sense.  This  last  condition  is  included 
in  the  condition  formulated  by  Kant  as  the  autonomy  in 
distinction  from  the  heteronomy  of  the  will.  Materially 
a  merely  legal  and  a  moral  action  may  be  the  same ;  but 
an  action  performed  because  of  external  compulsion  has 
not  the  character  of  a  moral  action  properly  so-called. 
Here,  at  least,  all  moralists  are  in  agreement. 

What  remains  of  Kant's  a  priori  method  is  the  recog- 
nition that  the  supreme  ethical  maxims,  though  by  them- 
selves insufficient  to  determine  a  positive  code  of  conduct, 
have  a  validity  that  no  deduction  from  ends  could  confer 
on  them.  The  law  of  justice  is  not  a  mere  means  to  any 
good  whatever ;  though  action  in  accordance  with  it  is 
undoubtedly  a  means  to  the  greatest  goods.  Hence  the 
utihtarian  arguments  for  the  observance  of  justice  have 
always  been  felt,  even  by  those  who  could  think  of  nothing 
better,  to  be  an  imperfect  reply  to  objections  put  in  the 
mouths  of  imaginary  sophistical  casuists.  They  seemed 
too  much  like  the  maintenance  of  a  mere  general  rule, 


IVJ  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  63 

once  fixed  by  prescription,  against  the  insight  of  science 
or  direct  intuition.  And  it  is  not  only  egoism,  but 
frequently  altruism,  that  rises  up  against  the  rules  of 
justice.  I  need  only  mention  benevolent  schemes  founded 
on  biology  that  involve  treating  the  human  race  as  a 
herd.  Yet,  as  I  have  admitted,  on  no  theory  are  all 
cases  perfectly  simple.  How  the  rules  of  justice  affect 
actual  conduct  will  be  considered  when  we  come  to 
discuss  further  the  relation  of  abstract  to  concrete 
ethics.  Meanwhile,  a  few  words, must  be  said  on  the 
formalism  of  Kant  in  relation  to  developments  since  his 
time. 

Whether  for  disciples  or  opponents,  this  has  been  the 
most  impressive  thing  in  Kant's  ethics.  The  whole 
complex  system  no  one  has  ever  accepted  in  its  entirety ; 
and,  avowedly  or  not,  the  preliminary  alike  to  following 
and  to  criticising  has  always  been  artificial  simplification. 
This  was  the  method  of  Hegel ;  who,  in  putting  forth  all 
his  power  to  show  the  want  of  content  in  Kant's  formalism, 
dealt  with  it  as  the  most  thoroughgoing  utilitarian  might 
have  done.  Thus  Hegel  may  be  taken  as  typical  of 
Kant's  critics. 

His  own  doctrine,  at  the  summit,  is  a  doctrine  of  the 
end  or  highest  good,  not  of  a  priori  law.  The  Hegelian 
formula,  "self-realisation,"  undoubtedly  includes  a  regard 
for  personality  absent  from  what  is  thought  to  be  typical 
utilitarianism,  with  its  "hedonical  calculus";  but,  after 
all,  self-realisation  is  a  formula  of  the  Art  of  Life,  not  of 
Abstract  Ethics.  In  my  view,  it  is  a  very  good  formula 
in  its  own  sphere;  but  it  does  not  solve,  but  evades, 
the  real  question  raised  by  Kant.  Of  course  it  is  not 
necessarily  an  egoistic  formula,  and  is  not  in  the  least 


64  THE   HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS       [CH. 

incompatible  with  Comte's  precept,  "Live  for  others^." 
The  individual,  for  Hegel  as  for  Comte,  is  in  his  very 
nature  social;  a  temporary  embodiment  of  history,  an 
"abstraction"  from  the  real  being  which  is  Humanity. 
Self-realisation  is  realisation  of  the  individual  as  at  the 
same  time  an  organ  of  society.  But,  if  we  were  to  deal  with 
Hegel  on  the  method  of  simplification  applied  to  Kant, 
we  should  have  to  say  that  justice  is  notavahd  concept 
in  his  system  at  all.  The  ultimate  test  of  right  is  Fact. 
Creon  is  as  much,  and  as  little,  justified  as  Antigone. 
The  right  of  both  is  at  once  affirmed  and  cancelled  in 
the  process  that  brings  into  collision  the  two  elements  in 
human  life  summed  up  as  the  Family  and  the  State. 
Here  the  only  reply  is  that,  whatever  this  fancy  may  be 
worth,  it  leaves  the  problem  of  justice  unsolved;  and 
that  we  have  the  poet  on  our  side.  Sophocles  leaves  us 
in  no  doubt  that  he  regards  the  right  as  with  Antigone, 
and  he  suggests  no  solution  such  as  Hegel's^.  The  problem, 
how  far  justice  is  also  fact,  remains  a  problem.  To  an 
Athenian  audience,  as  to  us,  right  was  clearer  than 
ultimate  fact.  And  certainly  the  Fact  that  is  identical 
with  appearance  was  not  the  moral  judge. 

But,  as  Kant  was  not  in  reality  a  pure  formalist,  but 
has  much  to  say  that  takes  full  account  of  fact  in  concrete 
cases,  so  Hegel  was  not  in  reality  the  mere  worshipper  of 

^  Kant  himself  had  generalised  the  ends  in  the  rival  systems  of  ethics 
before  him  in  the  two  formulae:  "one's  own  perfection"  and  "others' 
happiness."  Both  of  these  he  claimed  to  deduce  as  elements  in  his  own 
doctrine. 

*  An  effect  of  Hegel's  criticism  has  been  that  for  English  classical 
scholarship  Creon  has  become  an  embodiment  of  the  Prussian  State. 
To  an  Athenian  contemporary  of  Sophocles,  this  of  course  would  have 
meant  not  an  embodiment  of  one  relative  right  against  another,  but  of 
arbitrary  despotism  against  the  autonomy  of  the  "good  will." 


IV]  THE    HISTORY    OF   ABSTRACT    ETHICS  65 

present  fact  that  he  seemed  in  his  conservative  moods 
to  his  revolutionary  contemporaries.  Fact  is  ultimately- 
Thought;  and  Thought,  evolving  in  history  and  its 
highest  products,  which  include  systems  of  morality,  is 
only  through  a  process  not  yet  completed  the  judge  of 
all  things.  The  final  judgment  has  not  been  passed  till 
the  highest  expressions  of  the  process  have  appeared. 
This  at  any  rate  seems  to  me  a  fair  interpretation ;  but 
I  confess  that  I  am  criticising  systems  of  which  I  am  not 
singular  in  finding  the  external  form  repellent.  Even 
Kant's  system,  it  will  scarcely  be  denied  by  his  most 
devoted  disciples,  is  an  ultra-Gothic  edifice ;  though  Kant 
belongs  to  the  small  number  of  thinkers  of  whom  it  can 
be  said  that  in  sheer  power  they  have  no  superior.  But 
philosophy,  in  spite  of  a  common  prejudice,  is  a  pro- 
gressive thing.  And  no  degree  of  difficulty  in  really 
profound  thought  has  ever  prevented  its  complete  as- 
similation by  the  European  intellect.  Of  this  the  historical 
destiny  of  Aristotle's  Mela/physics  is  a  sufficient  proof. 
Thus  it  was  to  be  expected  that  the  insight  in  Kant's 
Ethics  would  sooner  or  later  pass  on,  not  without  progress, 
into  a  construction  in  some  simpler  style  of  architecture. 
This  expectation  has  been  realised  by  the  pubhcation  of 
Professor  Juvalta's  book,  which  I  now  proceed  to  ex- 
pound. 


W»  £• 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA^ 

Professor  Jiivalta  expressly  distinguishes  the  old  and 
the  new  problem  of  morality  as  the  problem  of  modern 
ethics  before  and  after  Kant.  The  old  problem  was  to 
find  the  foundation  of  a  morality  about  the  content  of 
which  there  was  agreement.  The  new  problem  is  to 
determine  whether  there  are  "values"  specifically  moral. 
It  is  not  new  in  the  rigorous  sense,  for  it  was  also  the 
problem  of  pre-Christian  ethics;  but  it  differs  by  dis- 
carding the  ancient  presupposition  that  the  moral  good 
must  necessarily  be  a  form  of  happiness. 

To  anticipate:  it  seeks  the  law  instead  of  the  end, 
but  requires  that  it  should  be  intrinsic,  an  expression  of 
autonomy,  not  imposed  by  external  authority. 

For  expounding  Professor  Juvalta's  work,  the  simplest 
way  has  seemed  to  me  to  be  the  most  straightforward. 
I  shall  follow  his  chapters  and  headings,  and  shall  almost 
limit  myself  to  exposition  without  comment^. 

^  II  Vecchio  e  il  Nuovo  Problema  della  Morale.  By  E.  Juvalta. 
Bologna:   N.  Zanichelli,  1914. 

^  One  remark  must  be  made  on  the  translation  of  the  word  "cos- 
cienza."  I  have  rendered  it  by  "conscience"  or  "consciousness"  as 
seemed  convenient.  It  has  no  special  significance  for  Juvalta's  doctrine, 
which  is  not  a  form  of  what  used  to  be  called  Intuitionism,  but  of 
Rationalism  modified  by  contact  with  empirical  theories  of  ethics. 


CH.  V]  THE    SOLUTION   OF   JUVALTA  67 


The  Foundation  of  Morality. 

1.  The  Character  of  the  Problem  and  its  Forms.  The 
problem  is  fictitious,  for  there  is  no  foundation  outside 
morality  itself.  Precisely  for  this  reason,  the  dictates  of 
the  moral  conscience  have  not  been  accepted  or  rejected 
according  as  they  agreed  or  did  not  agree  with  ethical 
systems,  but,  on  the  contrary,  these  have  been  accepted 
or  rejected  according  as  they  seemed  adapted  or  un- 
adapted  to  furnish  the  ground  for  moral  convictions. 

In  fact,  four  types  of  solution  have  been  put  forward. 
I.  To  consider  moral  principles  as  "truths,"  of  which 
the  foundation  is  sought  in  a  reality  objectively  given 
to  consciousness.  II.  To  demonstrate  the  goodness  of 
that  which  morality  prescribes,  that  is,  to  derive  its  norms 
from  an  end  or  from  a  good  or  order  of  goods.  III.  To 
prove  its  authority,  founded  either  (A)  in  History,  or 
(B)  in  a  Will  distinct  from  the  personal  will  and  imposing 
itself  on  this. 

2.  The  Foundation  sought  in  the  Reality.  The  theo- 
retical foundation  is  equally  illusory  whether  it  is  sought 
in  "science"  or  in  "metaphysics."  For  clearly,  since 
thinkers  of  equal  good  faith,  and  whose  logical  com- 
petence can  only  be  denied  by  a  petitio  principii,  connect 
the  same  moral  criterion  with  different  and  opposed 
theoretical  principles,  the  proof  fails  that  it  is  necessarily 
connected  with  either  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other.  But 
whence  springs  the  illusion? 

On  the  side  of  science,  it  springs  from  the  fallacy  of 

5—2 


68         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA      [CH. 

seeking  the  way  to  certain  results  while  leaving  unproved 
the  implication  that  those  results  are  desirable.  By  no 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  society  can  the  sociologist  prove 
that  civihsation  is  preferable  to  barbarism.  By  no  know- 
ledge of  the  laws  of  life  can  the  biologist  prove  that  life  is 
worth  Uving.  Given  a  certain  instinct  or  will  to  live, 
reasons  can  be  assigned  for  preferring  a  certain  course  of 
conduct;  but  without  that  instinct  or  will  no  scientific 
knowledge  avails  to  determine  any  action  whatever. 

What  has  been  said  of  science  applies  also  to  meta- 
physics, so  long  as  we  mean  by  metaphysics  knowledge 
of  an  "intelligible"  reality  in  so  far  as  intelligible  and  not 
as  having  value.  Thus,  to  establish  orders  of  being  or 
"degrees  of  reality"  avails  nothing  unless  the  conception 
of  being  includes  that  of  good.  ReaHty  simply  as  existence 
has  no  degrees.  The  apparent  ethical  bearing  of  Platonism 
and  related  metaphysical  doctrines  comes  from  a  synthesis 
of  "reality"  and  "perfection,"  of  existence  and  value. 
But  the  latter  is  not  given  in  any  metaphysical  concept ;  it 
is  carried  over  from  a  practical  interest,  conscious  or  not. 

When  a  metaphysical  doctrine  is  commended  because 
adapted  to  furnish  the  fomidation  of  "true  morality," 
does  not  this  imply  that  we  already  know  what  true 
moraHty  is,  apart  from  metaphysics? 

3.  The  Foundation  sought  in  a  Justification  from 
Ends.  The  fallacy  in  the  attempts  made  to  translate 
into  a  rigorous  doctrine  the  derivation  of  moral  values 
from  some  incontestable  "  highest  good  "  arises  from  this : 
that  while  the  essence  of  a  moral  value  consists  in  its 
pre-eminence  over  other  values,  it  is  treated  as  if  it  were 
identical  with  or  definable  in  terms  of  one  of  these  other 
values. 


V]  THE    SOLUTION    OF  JUVALTA  69 

The  types  may  be  classed  under  the  heads  of  Utili- 
tarianism and  mystical  Religiosity;  the  ends  being  re- 
spectively Happiness  and  Holiness. 

Let  us  set  aside  the  famihar  criticisms  on  Utihtarian- 
ism,  and  concede  that  happiness  has  a  determinate  con- 
tent and  is  a  harmony  of  assignable  goods,  including 
satisfaction  of  one's  own  conscience,  and  that  it  can  be 
demonstrated  that  constant  observance  of  moral  norms 
is  the  sure  and  indispensable  way  to  obtain  it.  It  would 
thus  have  been  proved  only  that  the  moral  values  are 
also  eudaemonological  values,  not  at  all  that  the  moral 
value  of  an  action  consists  in  its  being  a  means  to  happi- 
ness. The  question  is  not  about  the  practical  efficacy  of 
arguments  for  following  the  rules  of  morahty,  but  about 
their  theoretical  conclusiveness.  "Honesty  is  the  best 
policy"  is  not  a  moral  reason  for  being  honest.  To 
admit,  with  Mill,  differences  of  "quality"  in  the  con- 
stituents of  happiness,  amounts  in  the  end  simply  to 
approving  or  disapproving,  in  the  name  of  happiness,  of 
that  which  the  moral  conscience  approves  or  disap- 
proves^. 

On  the  second  type,  the  remark  is  to  be  made  that 
the  consciousness  of  the  religious  mystic,  though  in  the 
form  of  a  confused  and  not  clear  perception,  contains 
moral  values  that  could  not  be  drawn  from  the  other 
elements  of  the  perception  if  they  were  not  already  there. 
Moreover,  they  are  incorporated  as  something  that  could 
subsist  apart,  and  incorporated  for  that  reason.  The 
mystic  conceives  as  morally  perfect  the  Being  he  adores; 

1  Satisfaction  of  conscience,  it  is  noted,  though  a  good,  is  not  the  end 
of  moral  conduct;  the  end  is  the  realising  of  that  value  which  the 
conscience  recognises  as  moral. 


70        THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA       [CH. 

but  no  consciousness  could  find  moral  values  in  God  if 
it  did  not  know  them  already  as  values  and  distinguish 
them  as  moral  from  values  of  other  kinds. 

This  conclusion  is  unaffected  by  doubt  raised  whether 
the  support  of  religion  is  not  practically  necessary  for 
maintaining  a  stable  morality.  The  case  is  analogous 
to  that  of  Utilitarianism.  As  there,  so  here,  the  executive 
point  of  view  is  extraneous  to  the  properly  moral  question. 

The  same  general  argument  appHes  to  mixed  systems, 
such  as  Theological  Utilitarianism  (hedonistic  interpreta- 
tion of  the  religious  standard)  and  the  Humanitarian 
Mysticism  of  Comte  (rehgious  interpretation  of  the  utih- 
tarian  standard)^. 

However  plausible  from  the  present  considerations,  it 
would  nevertheless  be  precipitate  to  conclude  that  none 
of  these  systems  have  properly  ethical  as  distinguished 
from  hortatory  or  pedagogic  importance.  They  do  indeed 
all  fail  in  so  far  as  they  look  for  the  reason  of  the  supremacy 
of  moral  values  in  something  outside  the  values  them- 
selves; but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  different  kinds  of 
values,  moral  and  other,  are  connected  in  all  sorts  of 
ways.  For  example,  that  which  is  the  object  of  a  moral 
valuation,  say,  sincerity,  can  be  estimated  from  the  point 
of  view  of  an  intellectual  or  artistic  or  economic  interest. 
Conversely,  that  which  is  the  object  of  a  hedonistic  or 
aesthetic  or  any  other  valuation,  say,  riches,  art,  learning, 
can  be  estimated  also  as  a  good  of  moral  order.  Hence 
arise  complex  problems  of  conciliation,  among  which 
perhaps  the  reconciliation  of  virtue  and  happiness  is  not 
the  most  important. 

^  It  is  expressly  observed  that  the  Utilitarianism  of  the  latter  is 
altruistic ;  the  egoism  of  the  former  is  imderstood. 


V]  THE    SOLUTION    OF   JUVALTA  71 

4.  The  Foundation  sought  in  Authority.  The  authori- 
tative character  of  the  moral  judgment  and  the  imperative 
form  it  takes,  suggest  its  derivation  from  something  that 
transcends  consciousness  while  revealing  itself  in  it. 
Accordingly,  the  foundation  has  been  placed  in  historical 
titles  of  nobility  or  in  the  will  of  a  sovereign  power. 

A.  The  Historical  Foundation.  One  form  taken  by 
the  appeal  to  history  is  that  of  "evolutionary  ethics." 
But  in  fact  we  judge  of  the  evolution  or  selection  of  ideas 
and  feehngs  by  a  criterion  independent  of  the  process. 
That  which  by  the  hypothesis  is  its  product  decides 
whether  the  evolution  is  morally  progressive,  regressive 
or  indifferent.  It  is  not  because  juridical  "progress" 
has  abolished  torture  that  we  condemn  torture;  it  is 
because  we  condemn  torture  that  we  recognise  in  its 
abolition  progress  in  the  development  of  law.  Apart 
from  some  criterion  of  valuation,  whatever  it  may  be, 
there  are  no  "superior"  or  "inferior"  forms  of  life.  In 
evolutionary  ethics  such  a  valuation  is  necessarily  assumed, 
not  educed  from  the  order  of  evolution  itself;  as  was 
seen  when  Spencer  brought  in  the  hedonistic  criterion  of 
a  pure  pleasure  corresponding  to  complete  adaptation  to 
the  environment. 

This  is  no  less  seen  when  the  evolution  is  internal  and 
psychical  than  when  it  is  external  and  mechanical.  Sub- 
stitute a  different  scale  of  values,  as  Nietzsche  did,  and 
what  was  called  bv  the  democrat  and  the  humanitarian 
moral  progress  becomes  a  wretched  degeneration.  And, 
when  conscience,  with  its  criterion  of  value,  opposes  itself 
to  that  which  at  the  moment  has  or  seems  to  have  the 
support  of  history,  it  has  just  as  good  a  case  as  the  actual 
fact,  even  from  the  historical  point  of  view ;    for  history. 


72         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA       [CH. 

which  withdraws  its  support  to-day,  may  give  it  to- 
morrow. History  is  conservation  and  development,  but 
also  innovation  and  opposition :  in  Hegelian  terms,  it  is 
one  thing  only  because  it  is  at  the  same  time  the  other. 

Even  the  history  of  reflective  thought  on  the  ethical 
problem  itself  cannot  furnish  a  solution,  important  as  it 
is  for  attaining  clearness  to  our  own  minds.  The  efiort 
after  ethical  unification  in  view  of  the  systems  revolves 
around  a  content  furnished  by  immediate  moral  ex- 
perience, and  assumes  the  validity  of  certain  moral 
judgments.  Moreover,  new  moral  intuitions  make  their 
appearance  from  time  to  time,  not  only  in  the  systems 
elaborated  by  reflective  thinkers  but  also  outside  all 
systematic  construction.  Such  affirmation  of  new  values 
is  not  the  conclusion  of  a  scientific  or  philosophical  in- 
vestigation, but  a  penetration  or  breaking  of  the  moral 
consciousness  into  the  current  of  reflective  thought,  which 
does  not  give  them  but  receives  them,  illuminates  but  does 
not  create  them. 

B.  The  Foundation  sought  in  a  Will.  In  examining 
the  imperative  character  of  moral  precepts,  a  distinction 
IS  necessary.  To  speak  of  the  "ought"  or  of  "duty"  as 
characteristic  of  the  moral  valuation  is  equivocal.  The 
duty  is  not  a  duty  of  estimating,  but  of  conforming  the 
action  to  the  estimation.  The  moral  valuation  precedes 
and  justifies  the  obUgation,  not  vice  versa. 

The  peculiarity  of  the  moral  valuation  is  that  it  implies 
taking  sides  against  any  valuation  that  opposes  it.  Hence 
its  recognition  exacts  a  constant  attitude  of  the  will. 
Duty,  in  so  far  as  it  is  characteristic  of  morality,  that  is, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  internal  and  not  reducible  to  the  feehng 
of  an  external  compulsion,  is  the  consciousness  of  what 


V]  THE    SOLUTION    OF   JUVALTA  73 

is  demanded  by  the  moral  value;  it  manifests  itself  in 
its  clearest  form  when  it  is  in  conflict  with  motives  of 
another  nature.  Thus  moral  duty  presupposes  the  moral 
valuation.  There  would  be  no  sense  in  speaking  of  a 
duty  of  recognising  moral  values  to  a  conscience  closed 
to  every  ethical  valuation ;  for  this  would  amount  to  the 
duty  of  feeling  in  a  certain  manner. 

Shall  we  say  then  that  if  there  are  people  "morally 
deaf"  they  have  no  duties?  In  the  ethical,  or  internal, 
sense  they  have  none ;  but  they  may  be  under  the  obli- 
gation of  acting  as  if  they  recognised  at  least  those  grosser 
moral  values  that  are  susceptible  of  being  presented  by 
external  coercion  as  motives  appreciable  even  by  a 
consciousness  non-moral.  Now  this  obligation  necessarily 
implies  the  reference  to  a  superior  power  distinct  from  the 
individual  will.  As  this  power  imposes  itself  in  view  of 
an  end  and  in  agreement  with  certain  norms,  it  is  con- 
ceived as  the  power  of  a  Will  [of  the  State  or  of  the 
Deity]  that  commands  the  observance  of  those  norms. 
Evidently,  however,  this  would  not  suffice  to  give  a 
reason  for  duty  as  internal  obligation,  even  if,  by  tracing 
it  to  its  origin,  it  explained  the  formation  of  the  sense  of 
duty. 

Yet,  since  the  moral  will  manifests  itself  as  the 
requirement  of  the  constant  subordination  of  motives 
antagonistic  to  morality,  it  reacts  in  the  form  of  approval 
of  the  external  coercive  power  which  by  its  "sanctions" 
represses  those  motives.  Thus  the  power  that  deserves 
respect  is  distinguished  from  the  constringent  force  that 
merely  has  to  be  submitted  to.  The  command  may  be 
limited  to  a  certain  sphere  of  moral  values  [command  of 
the  State],  or  it  may  coincide  with  the  moral  value  itself 


74         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA      [CH. 

[command  of  the  Deity].  In  either  case,  the  difEerence 
remains  between  the  attitude  of  the  moral  and  the  non- 
moral  consciousness.  For  the  first,  it  is  the  moral  valua- 
tion that  causes  the  obligation  to  be  recognised  and 
respected.  For  the  second,  it  is  the  obligation  that 
causes  moral  values  to  be  recognised:  the  observance  of 
the  obligation  is  not  internal  morality,  but  external 
conformity  to  certain  commands  that  are  worth  just  as 
much  as  the  sanction  that  accompanies  them  is  worth. 

If  the  distinction  between  command  and  valuation 
is  not  overcome  even  when  the  two  terms  are  unified  in 
the  conception  of  an  authority  at  once  irresistibly  powerful 
and  indefectibly  moral,  the  more  manifestly  will  it  subsist 
in  all  other  forms  of  sanction.  There  remain,  however, 
at  least  in  appearance,  two  ways  of  evading  the  con- 
clusion :  either  to  deny  all  value  to  the  moral  consciousness 
as  such,  and  to  found  every  valuation  on  the  power 
that  posits  it  at  its  good  pleasure;  or  to  transfer  the 
criterion  of  moral  valuation  from  the  personal  conscious- 
ness to  some  other  consciousness,  impersonal  or  collective. 

Now  the  first  thesis  either  fails  to  answer  the  question 
it  purports  to  answer,  since  to  deny  all  value  to  the  moral 
valuation  is  not  to  say  whence  its  authority  comes;  or 
it  takes  away  only  in  words  the  distinction,  which  returns 
through  every  subtlety,  between  justice  and  arbitrary 
will.  When  the  Platonic  Callicles  condemns  the  laws  as 
an  imposition  by  the  foohsh  and  weak  many  on  the  clever 
and  strong  few,  his  blame  implies  a  moral  criterion 
superior  to  force ;  for  he  thinks  it  unjust  that  the  actually 
predominant  force  should  overrule  the  force  that  ought  to 
prevail.  And  in  the  absolutism  of  Hobbes,  the  unlimited 
power  of  the  sovereign  excludes  the  moral  valuation  only 


V]        THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA        75 

in  appearance ;  the  reason  for  submission  to  its  arbitrary 
will  being  that  a  bad  law  is  better  than  no  law  and  a 
tyrannical  government  than  no  government. 

Of  the  second  thesis,  all  the  forms  fail  to  give  anything 
different  from  the  personal  consciousness,  to  which  the 
authority  of  the  collective  consciousness  is  always  re- 
ducible. For  this  has  no  expression  except  in  the  person 
as  an  individual  manifestation  of  the  social  consciousness ; 
which  indeed  only  exists  in  the  individual,  the  ends  of 
society  being  such  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  made  such 
by  individual  persons.  Since  it  is  in  individual  persons 
that  society  becomes  conscious,  moral  values  are  moral 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  estimated  by  the  personal 
consciousness.  From  the  ethical  point  of  view,  it  is  not 
society  that  gives  value  to  my  moral  criterion,  but  my 
moral  criterion  that  gives  value  to  society.  It  is  to  the 
ethical  judgment  of  the  individual  that  every  social  reform 
appeals,  including  that  which  calls  itself  Socialism.  The 
faith  which  gives  itself  that  name  is  in  fact  a  moral  ideal 
having  for  centre  the  individual.  Collective  property 
(whatever  might  be  its  actual  effects)  is  aimed  at  as  a 
necessary  condition  for  rendering  effective  the  liberty  of 
all,  for  making  of  each  human  individual  a  true  human 
person. 

The  subtle  and  comphcated  doctrine  which  makes  the 
State  the  centre  of  all  moral  authority  has  in  part  been 
dealt  with  in  the  discussion  of  the  doctrines  that  find  the 
supreme  authority  in  History  or  in  Power.  So  far  as  it 
occupies  a  distinct  place,  the  decisive  point  is  this :  that 
the  ethical  value  of  the  State,  even  if  we  assume  it  to  be 
the  ideal  State,  arises  from  its  being  the  only  adequate 
organ  of  the  universal  ethical  will  that  becomes  aware  of 


76  THE    SOLUTION    OF   JUVALTA  [CH. 

itself  as  valid  in  the  personal  consciousness.  Thus  in 
the  rational  order  the  knowledge  of  the  value  of  the 
State  is  derivative. 

5.  Inversion  of  the  Problems  relative  to  the  Foundation 
of  Morality.  Every  efiort  to  derive  a  moral  valuation 
from  something  of  which  the  moral  value  is  not  already 
recognised  is  therefore  vain  or  illusory.  Either  it  does 
not  give  what  is  sought,  or  it  presupposes  what  its  claim 
is  to  found.  Thus  the  preceding  discussions  point  to  an 
inversion  of  the  problems.  The  question  is  no  longer 
to  find  the  reason  of  moral  values  in  the  reality  we  know, 
but  to  discover  whether  it  is  possible  to  affirm  a  system 
of  realities  in  correspondence  with  the  order  of  moral 
values ;  not  to  fix  those  values  by  relation  to  happiness  as 
an  end,  but  to  determine  whether  happiness  is  ultimately 
attainable  only  by  morality;  not  to  educe  them  from 
history,  but  to  learn  whether  history  can  be  read  as  the 
realisation  of  a  moral  process ;  not  to  posit  them  in 
relation  to  what  a  Will  imposes,  but  to  ascertain  whether 
the  postulate  of  a  Will  that  imposes  them  can  be  theo- 
retically upheld.  In  any  case,  the  primacy  and  inde- 
pendence of  moral  values  remains  clearly  established. 


II. 

The  Plurality  of  the  Moral  Criteria. 

1.  Kanfs  Formal  Criterion  of  Valuation.  The  inde- 
pendence of  moral  values  and  the  impossibility  of  deducing 
them  from  any  theoretical  speculation  was  recognised  and 
affirmed  in  the  most  expUcit  manner  by  Kant.  To 
avoid  confusion,  however,  it  must  be  pointed  out  that 


V]         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JU YALTA        77 

this  recognition  of  the  independence  of  ethics  does  not 
necessarily  imply  acceptance  of  the  principles  and  methods 
of  Kant's  ethical  philosophy. 

Mere  universality  of  form  in  ethical  legislation  can  by 
itself  give  no  content.  Reason  is  only  a  principle  of 
consistency,  theoretical  or  practical,  and  yields  no  direct, 
as  distinguished  from  derivative,  moral  values.  The 
"law  of  the  stronger,"  for  example,  if  taken  in  a  certain 
sense,  is  quite  reconcilable  with  Kant's  categorical  im- 
perative. If  indeed  I  subjugate  others  to  my  arbitrary 
will  when  I  am  stronger,  and  then  cry  out  because  I  am 
myself  subjugated  when  I  am  weaker,  I  contradict  the 
precept.  So  to  act  that  I  can  will  that  my  maxim  should 
at  the  same  time  be  made  law  universal;  but  if  force 
is  in  truth  to  me  the  highest  thing,  and  I  do  not  complain 
when  I  am  in  turn  subdued,  there  is  no  contradiction 
of  the  rule  of  universality.  Kant's  more  fecund  formula, 
Act  so  as  to  treat  humanity,  whether  in  thy  own  person 
or  in  that  of  another,  always  at  the  same  time  as  an 
end  and  never  merely  as  a  means,  has  this  character  of 
fecundity  only  in  so  far  as  it  gives  a  content  to  the  uni- 
versal;   and  this  content  is  assumed,  not  deduced. 

Pure  Reason,  we  perceive,  as  the  mere  requirement  of 
coherence,  does  not  tell  us  what  moral  values  are;  and 
we  get  no  more  hght  from  the  Kantian  conceptions  of  the 
Pure  Will  and  the  Good  Will.  Pure  will,  autonomous  wall, 
will  devoid  of  every  impulse  of  sensibiHty,  can  be  nothing 
but  the  will  that  Reason  wills,  reason  itself  in  so  far  as 
practical,  in  so  far  as  legislative  form ;  and  it  gives  only 
this  same  universality.  The  conception  of  the  good  will 
adds  indeed  obligation  (action  from  duty)  to  universality 
(respect  for  law  as  law);    but  this  has  reference  only  to 


78  THE    SOLUTION    OF   JUVALTA  [CH. 

the  case  of  conflict  between  respect  for  the  moral  law  on 
the  one  side  and  the  impulses  that  oppose  it  on  the  other. 
To  tell  us  that  it  is  obHgatory  to  act  in  accordance  with 
the  moral  law  is  not  to  tell  us  what  the  moral  law  is. 

If  respect  for  humanity,  or  for  the  human  person,  as 
an  end  in  itself,  is  understood,  as  it  was  by  Kant,  of  the 
rational  person,  the  question  remains,  whether  it  is  merely 
the  universal  reason  in  each  person  that  is  the  object  of 
respect,  or  each  personality  also  in  its  difference  from 
others. 

Only  on  condition  that  we  conceive  the  personality 
as  comprising  indeed  but  not  exhausting  itself  in  reason, 
do  we  get  any  real  content.  With  nothing  but  the 
universally  legislative  reason  to  respect  in  each,  clearly,  as 
before,  we  do  not  get  beyond  the  form.  Respect  for  the 
human  spirit  in  the  entirety  of  its  manifestations  cannot 
be  derived  from  respect  for  reason  as  reason  and  for  law 
because  it  is  law. 

From  Kant's  ow^n  illustrations  it  is  manifest  that  the 
reduction  of  the  criterion  of  moral  valuation  to  a  purely 
formal  criterion  supposes  the  ends  of  moral  action  already 
known  as  to  their  content;  duties  already  known  and 
determined  as  to  their  object.  An  answer  is  given  to  the 
question.  When  is  the  intention  of  the  action  truly  good, 
w^hen  is  an  act  truly  moral?  but  not  to  the  question. 
What  are  the  actions  into  which  this  good  will  ought  to 
translate  itself,  what  are  the  ends  to  which  the  good  wall 
ought  to  turn?  In  short,  the  question  is  not  answered. 
What  are  the  values  in  the  effecting  of  which  with  purity 
of  will  morality  consists? 

The  answer  is  in  fact  given  by  the  moral  conscience. 
But  what  if  the  answer  were  equivocal  ?     Suppose  that  in 


V]        THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA         79 

two  consciences  there  is  equal  respect  for  the  moral  law, 
but  that  the  law  commands  to  one  what  it  forbids  or  does 
not  command  to  the  other.  Is  the  opposition  got  rid  of 
by  the  knowledge  that  the  will  is  good  when  it  is  deter- 
mined by  respect  for  the  law,  and  that  morality  consists 
in  fulfiUing  duty  for  duty's  sake? 

2.  The  Diversity  of  the  Moral  Criteria.  There  are  in 
truth  as  many  moral  consciences  as  there  are  personal 
consciences  in  which  certain  values  are  recognised  as 
supreme  and  normative  and  vaHd  independently  of  the 
momentary  and  variable  flux  of  transitory  and  accidental 
valuations;  and  as  valid  alike  for  one's  own  judgment 
and  will  and  for  the  judgment  and  will  of  others.  The 
singular  fascination  exercised  by  the  ethics  of  Kant 
comes  not  from  the  formahsm  in  itself,  but  from  the 
faith  that  beneath  the  form  there  is  only  one  content, 
the  same  for  all  consciences  that  are  moral.  All  efi'orts 
to  prove  this,  however,  are  vain.  The  demand  of  reason 
for  coherence  in  the  sense  of  consistency  can  indeed  be 
rigorously  maintained ;  but  it  is  an  illusion  to  think  that 
rationahty  by  itself  suffices  to  distinguish  values  from 
non-values,  moral  values  from  non-moral  values;  that 
it  can  make  us  recognise  the  value  of  any  object,  ideal 
or  real,  without  recurrence,  direct  or  indirect,  to  some 
non-rational  datum  or  postulate. 

To  take  examples :  the  devotee  of  money,  the  devotee 
of  art,  the  devotee  of  knowledge,  can  all  regulate  their 
thoughts  and  actions  with  equal  rationality  by  applying 
consistently  to  their  own  lives  and  to  those  of  others 
their  own  estimate  of  the  highest  good.  And,  while 
moral  values,  as  has  been  shown,  cannot  be  reduced  to 
heterogeneous  values, — hedonistic  (egoistic  or  altruistic), 


80         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA       [CH. 

noetic,  aesthetic  or  religious, — yet  all  the  modes  of  life 
connected  with  these  various  values  do  in  fact  take  upon 
themselves  an  ethical  form;  the  dominant  value  being 
applied  universally  as  a  test. 

At  the  same  time,  diverse  as  they  are,  they  all  re- 
cognise, though  in  subordination  to  their  supreme  end, 
certain  moral  virtues  commonly  so-called,  such  as  tem- 
perance, force  of  will,  veracity^.  So  again,  the  man  whose 
distinctive  interest  is  moral,  the  homo  ethicus,  has  to 
recognise  in  artistic,  rehgious,  intellectual,  economic  values 
a  direct  or  indirect  moral  value.  Further,  applying  the 
consideration  of  "organic  value"  felicitously  brought  out 
by  G.  E,  Moore  {Ethics,  chap.  vii.  p.  246),  viz.,  that  "the 
amount  by  which  the  value  of  a  whole  exceeds  that  of 
one  of  its  factors  is  not  necessarily  equal  to  that  of  the 
remaining  factor,"  we  find  that  the  ideal  object  of  the  moral 
valuation  may  acquire  a  greater  value  when  knowledge 
or  sense  of  beauty  is  added,  though  these  are  regarded  as 
in  themselves  diverse  interests^.  It  is  not  without  sig- 
nificance that  the  highest  good  has  been  identified  with 
the  highest  truth  and  the  highest  beauty.     Moreover,  the 

^  This  observation  reappears  in  the  next  section  in  a  more  generalised 
aspect. 

^  Cf.  Moore,  Ethics,  p.  247 :  "Whatever  single  kind  of  thing  may  be 
proposed  as  a  measure  of  intrinsic  value,  instead  of  pleasure — whether 
knowledge,  or  virtue,  or  wisdom,  or  love — it  is,  I  think,  quite  plain  that 
it  is  not  such  a  measure ;  because  it  is  quite  plain  that,  however  valuable 
any  one  of  these  things  may  be,  we  may  always  add  to  the  value  of  a 
whole  which  contains  any  one  of  them,  not  only  by  adding  more  of  that 
one,  but  also  by  adding  something  else  instead.''^ 

A  particular  case  of  "organic  value"  is  stated  by  Hume  in  the 
Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  Book  n,  Part  iii,  sect.  10,  "Of  curiosity,  or 
the  love  of  truth,"  where  he  shows  how  the  addition  of  even  a  small 
degree  of  philanthropy  makes  an  immense  difference  to  the  love  of 
truth  as  a  passion. 


V]         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA        81 

consciousness  of  the  homo  ethicus,  coming  to  recognise  in 
morality  the  internal  notes  of  spontaneity,  liberty,  au- 
tonomy, as  distinguished  from  mere  external  conformity, 
is  led  to  extend  the  intrinsic  dignity  of  moral  values  to 
the  other  spiritual  values  also  which  have  these  notes. 

Thus  the  present  situation  is  that,  for  the  general 
uniformity  of  content  that  prevailed  in  European  morals 
approximately  from  the  triumph  of  Christian  ethics^  to 
Kant,  there  has  substituted  itself  a  variety  of  systems 
recognising  different  criteria  of  value.  The  systems 
differ  not,  as  before,  by  proposing  different  foundations 
for  a  common  content,  but  by  expressing,  perhaps  in 
their  larger  or  more  significant  part,  a  diversity  of  con- 
trasting contents.  And  the  common  content  still  re- 
cognised has  for  the  personal  conscience  no  greater 
authority  in  itself  than  that  of  the  content  marking  out 
the  particular  system.  There  seems  no  issue  then  unless 
the  conscience  itself  can  or  must  recognise,  without 
abandoning  its  own  criterion  of  valuation,  some  difference, 
if  not  of  kind  then  of  degree,  between  one  valuation  and 
another. 

3.  Conditionality  in  the  Moral  Values.  Let  us  make 
the  improbable  supposition  that  the  philanthropic,  the 
speculative,  the  religious,  the  aesthetic  spirit,  recognise 
no  values  at  all  save  those  that  can  be  measured  by  the 
criteria  of  their  own  ideal  ends.     Even  so,  it  will  be 

^  This  means,  more  generally,  the  ethics  of  later  antiquity,  pre- 
dominantly Stoic,  which  largely  passed  over  into  Christianity.  The 
political  conditions  of  the  ethical  modifications  noted  by  Juvalta  were 
the  transition  from  the  city-State,  with  its  vigorous  self-affirmation  of 
diverse  types,  to  the  uniformity  of  an  imperial  civilisation,  and  then 
the  return,  after  the  dissolution  of  this,  to  varieties  based  in  independent 
but  interacting  new  nationalities. 

W.  E.  6 


82         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA       [CH. 

found  that  certain  endowments,  for  example,  promptitude, 
tenacity,  self-control,  courage,  are  and  must  be  considered 
as  values  by  all  the  types  without  distinction ;  because 
all,  if  they  are  intelligent,  must  recognise  in  these  personal 
qualities  conditions  either  indispensable  or  extremely 
useful  for  the  reaUsation  of  the  order  of  values  peculiar 
to  each.  For  the  same  reason,  it  vnll  be  found  also  that 
respect  for  the  inviolableness  and  liberty  of  the  person, 
observance  of  contracts,  exchange  of  services,  and  the 
customs,  institutions,  laws  and  dispositions  of  spirit  con- 
nected with  them,  such  as  probity,  impartiality,  sympathy, 
must  be  recognised  as  values.  All  the  types  therefore 
will  be  led  to  recognise  and  appreciate  in  themselves  and 
others — abstraction  made  of  every  moral  valuation — 
values  personal  and  social  that  arise  out  of  this  relation 
of  conditionality  with  respect  to  all  alike.  Since  this  is 
a  necessary  and  permanent  relation,  each  of  the  types 
must  recognise  in  such  values  a  certain  precedence  over 
the  direct  and  final  values  that  depend  on  them. 

We  arrive  thus  at  the  distinction  between  those  con- 
ditioning values  for  which  every  conscience  can  recognise 
as  legitimate  an  external  legislation  imposing  them,  and 
the  final  values  of  which  an  external  legislation  ought 
merely  not  to  exclude  the  possibility.  For  the  former 
are  conditions  for  all,  while  the  latter  are,  by  the  hypo- 
thesis, values  each  only  for  its  own  type^. 

The  examples  adduced  so  far  do  not,  however,  corre- 
spond to  a  rigorous  determination.  If  we  try  to  fix  with 
precision  the  values  that  make  up  this  common  content, 
we  shall  find  that  they  are  summed  up  in  two  conditions 

^  The  very  exclusiveness   of   each   type  is   thus   made  to  compel 
generality  if  they  are  to  live  under  a  common  system. 


V]  THE    SOLUTION    OF   JUVALTA  83 

recognised  in  effect  as  primary  fundamental  values  by 
every  moral  system:  namely,  liberty  and  justice.  These 
conditions  emerge  when  each  type — the  philanthropist, 
the  speculative  inquirer,  the  mystic,  the  artist — recognises 
both  that  it  cannot  carry  its  positive  imperative  beyond 
the  common  values  and  that  it  must  not  deny  the  orders 
of  value  that  give  direction  to  the  other  modes  of  life; 
that  none  is  entitled  to  impose  its  peculiar  criterion  on 
the  others  as  the  ultimate  test. 

To  bring  to  actuality  in  oneself  and  in  every  other 
person  these  values  of  liberty  and  justice,  and  the  values 
implicit  in  them,  must  be  recognised  as  a  duty  universally 
valid ;  or  rather  as  the  only  duty,  or  the  only  category  of 
duties,  truly  universal. 

But  liberty  is  not  a  condition  that  exists  in  fact,  a 
given  possession;  it  is  a  conquest  to  be  made,  an  ideal 
that  requires  ever  new  efforts  and  imposes  ever  new 
duties.  And  the  same  is  to  be  said  of  justice,  which  is 
the  social  mirror  of  liberty.  Also,  since  liberty  and 
justice  have  been  deduced  here  as  indirect  values,  there 
remains  always  the  possibility  of  a  conflict  between  a 
direct  interest  such  as  that  of  knowledge  or  beauty  or 
sympathy,  and  the  mediate  and  indirect  duties  of  liberty 
and  justice ;  or,  in  general  terms,  between  the  final  values 
that  are  supreme  for  the  individual  consciousness  and 
the  values  that  appear  to  it  only  instrumental. 

4.  The  Presupposition  of  every  Moral  Valuation,  and 
the  Fundamental  Opposition  of  the  Criteria.  Liberty  and 
justice,  however,  are  not  merely  indirect  moral  values, 
but  also  values  for  themselves.  To  recognise  the  supreme 
value,  for  each,  of  an  end  or  ideal  subordinating  all  other 
values  and  giving  a  constant  direction  to  the  will,  is  to 

6—2 


84         THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA       [CH. 

recognise  the  supreme  value  of  that  which  constitutes  the 
personal  unity.  Now  this  implies  the  absolute  value  of 
the  human  person;  for  if  the  personality  had  no  value, 
the  ends  and  ideals  in  which  it  is  centred  could  have 
none. 

This  intrinsic  and  absolute  value  of  the  person  in 
itself  is  the  implicit  presupposition,  the  postulate  under- 
stood in  every  moral  valuation.  All  discussion  on  its 
legitimacy  is  vain,  or  rather  self- contradictory.  By  this 
presupposition,  it  is  imposed  on  me  that  I  should  be  a 
person  and  should  will  that  every  human  being  should  be 
a  person ;  and  not  merely  a  human  person  as  rational 
being  in  general,  but  this  particular  person.  Distinctive 
personality,  expressing  itself  in  an  ideal,  coincides  with 
liberty  in  the  positive  sense.  The  recognition  of  its  value 
in  others  is  the  demand  of  justice^. 

The  proof  that  the  end  chosen  is  the  end  of  a  coherent 
personal  will  and  not  a  mere  caprice  of  the  transitory 
and  mutable  ego  is  the  readiness  for  sacrifice.  The  value 
of  life  is  measured  by  the  value  of  that  to  which  one  is 
ready  to  sacrifice  it. 

The  moral  value  of  the  particular  content  of  the  will 
springs  from  its  being  the  means  by  which  the  absolute 
value  of  human  personality  expresses  itself  in  the  in- 
dividual consciousness.  Thus  the  ideal  in  which  the 
criterion  or  the  law  of  moral  valuation  embodies  itself  for 
the  conscience  of  individual  persons  constitutes  for  each 
the  affirmation  of  the  spiritual  unity  of  its  will  to  be  a 
person,    of   its   liberty.     And   so    liberty,    which   before 

1  These  two  points,  not  stated  here  by  Juvalta  in  so  many  words, 
but  formulated  below,  seem  to  me  to  constitute  the  nerve  of  the 
a  rgument. 


V]  THE    SOLUTION    OF   JUVALTA  85 

appeared  only  as  a  common  condition  for  actualising  every 
order  of  values,  becomes  here  a  value  by  itself  immediately 
universal  and  at  the  same  time  proper  to  the  individual 
The  imperative  of  hberty  is  at  once:  Be  a  person,  and 
Be  thyself;  Respect  humanity,  and  Respect  in  thyself 
and  in  all  others  the  individual  and  concrete  expression 
of  humanity. 

This  does  not  mean  of  course  that  there  is  a  duty  to 
be  original  as  well  as  to  be  just;  though  each  personality 
has  its  shade  of  difference  that  should  aim  at  expression. 
The  individual  differences,  however,  group  themselves 
around  certain  types,  and  hence  arise  necessary  oppo- 
sitions. The  fundamental  form  of  opposition,  which 
criticism  can  only  establish  and  not  get  rid  of,  is  the  out- 
come of  the  contrast  between  the  universal  moral  values — 
the  values  of  liberty^  and  justice — and  those  that  have 
supreme  value  for  the  individual  consciousness.  Briefly, 
the  antithesis  is  between  the  values  of  justice  and  the 
values  of  culture;  between  the  requirement  that  each 
should  be  or  should  have  the  power  to  become  a  person, 
that  is,  a  free,  conscious  and  coherent  w^ll,  and  the  re- 
quirement that  he  who  is  already  a  person,  that  is  to  say, 
who  has  the  consciousness  of  his  duty  and  power  to  make 
himself  free,  should  augment  and  enrich  himself  by  new 
values.  It  is  the  antithesis  between  number  and  quality, 
between  extension  and  intensity;  between  the  duty  of 
rendering  those  participators  in  the  values  of  liberty  who 
are  not  already  participators,  and  the  duty  of  increasing 
in  those  who  already  possess  them  the  values  of  culture, 

^  Here  of  course  liberty  means  the  equal  liberty  of  others,  not  the 
liberty  of  the  particular  personality  in  question,  which  is  identical  with 
the  effort  towards  its  own  ideal  end. 


86        THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA      [CH. 

which  are,  at  least  mediately,  an  increment  in  the  values 
of  hberty. 

Are  the  two  paths  convergent  ?  Let  us  hope  that  they 
are ;  but  at  present  the  question  is  to  determine  which  is 
the  predominant  moral  requirement:  the  increase  of  a 
culture  from  which  most  of  those  who  are  its  necessary 
instruments  are  excluded,  or  the  removal  or  diminution 
of  this  exclusion. 

To  say  that  the  culture  of  the  few  is  necessarily  the 
elevation  of  all,  or  that  the  elevation  of  all  is  necessarily 
increase  of  culture,  is  to  delude  oneself  with  words;  it 
is  to  repeat  in  another  strain  of  optimism  the  old-fashioned 
coincidences  of  the  general  good  with  the  individual  good. 
Saying  so  does  not  make  it  so. 

5.  The  Relations  of  Morals  to  Politics  and  Religion. 
Pohtically  an  opposition  of  tendencies  displays  itself  in 
different  conceptions  of  the  justice  constitutive  of  the 
State.  To  the  universal  moral  values  corresponds  an 
obligation  at  once  external  and  internal ;  to  the  properly 
personal  moral  values,  an  obhgation  only  internal.  This 
is  the  general  position,  determined  by  the  ideal  that  the 
State,  considered  ethically,  has  to  realise;  but  there  are 
different  views  as  to  the  precise  character  of  the  justice 
that  should  fix  and  preserve  the  conditions  necessary  for 
the  liberty  of  all.  Thus  we  find  the  interest  of  diversity 
defended  by  a  relatively  conservative  Liberalism;  while 
strictly  equal  external  possibilities  for  all  to  become 
persons  are  championed  by  that  which  is  wrongly  called 
Socialism,  but  would  rightly  be  described  as  Universalistic 
Individualism.  Under  the  actual  conditions,  this  differ- 
ence issues  in  a  conflict  juridical  in  form  and  economic  in 
substance. 


V]        THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA         87 

Now  it  is  to  be  noted  that  if  for  the  contest  of  higher 
interests  (noetic,  aesthetic,  rehgious  or  altruistic)  so  far 
considered,  we  substitute  interests  of  egoistic  hedonism, 
we  arrive  at  precisely  the  same  universal  values  of  liberty 
and  justice ;  provided  only  that  the  egoist  will  rationalise 
his  egoism,  that  is  to  say,  will  recognise  that  in  the  same 
conditions  the  same  criterion  of  valuation  is  admissible 
for  all.  And  in  fact  we  find  that  pohtical  liberahsm,  in 
its  purely  political,  that  is,  external  aspect,  is  modelled 
on  the  conception  of  economic  freedom.  This  only  in 
appearance  contradicts  the  thesis  that  a  value  cannot  be 
normative  unless  considered  as  distinct  from  the  tran- 
sitory and  variable  desires  of  the  subject;  for  the  value 
contemplated  by  economics  is  not  pleasure,  or  subjective 
satisfaction,  but  wealth,  which  is  a  common  term  of 
reference  for  all  hedonistic  values,  being  the  instrument 
for  attaining  them  in  general.  So  far  as  method  is 
concerned,  the  norms  of  justice  can  be  most  simply 
deduced  from  the  egoistic  conflict  formulated  in  economic 
terms. 

Hence  follow  two  corollaries.  The  first  is  that  the 
political  power,  so  far  as  coercive,  that  is,  acting  by 
sanctions  and  therefore  appealing  to  egoistic  motives,  is 
not  in  itself  an  organ  of  morality :  political  institutions 
are  moral  or  immoral  only  as  inwardly  estimated  by 
the  individual  conscience.  The  second  is  that,  since  the 
juridical  order  has  to  justify  itself  from  an  egoistic  point 
of  view,  it  must  consider  the  higher  goods  first  only 
as  hedonistically  desirable.  Having  thus  brought  them 
under  the  class  of  values  desired  for  the  sake  of  hedonistic 
satisfaction,  it  can  then  proceed  to  fulfil  its  ethical  or 
educative   function,    which   is    to    promote    culture    by 


88        THE  SOLUTION  OF  JUVALTA       [CH. 

preparing  the  conditions  necessary  for  rising  to  the  effort 
after  these  higher  goods. 

When  the  State  is  considered  in  relation  to  other 
States,  it  assumes  the  nature  and  function  of  a  Person 
among  Persons.  Here  we  come  upon  an  antinomy  in 
the  relations  of  the  citizen  and  the  State,  according  as 
the  State  is  considered  in  its  internal  action  or  in  its 
external  conduct.  In  the  former  relation,  the  poHtical 
Power  is  from  the  ethical  point  of  view  the  means  and 
the  single  person  the  end;  in  the  latter,  the  State  is  end 
and  the  citizen  means.  The  political  parties  that  consider 
the  opposition  of  States  as  insuperable  and  the  sovereignty 
of  each  State  as  ethically  unconditioned  tend  to  make  the 
second  order  of  conceptions  prevail.  Those  that  beheve 
that  the  opposition  can  be  overcome  and  that  the 
sovereignty  of  States  in  their  mutual  relations  is  ethically 
conditioned  manifest  the  opposite  tendency. 

The  individual  modes  of  life  directed  by  an  ideal 
have  a  resemblance  to  a  personal  religion;  and,  if  we 
conceive  the  moral  ideal  as  realised  in  a  Being  whom  we 
call  God,  our  devotion  to  the  ideal  becomes  actually 
religion.  There  is  consequently  a  certain  analogy  between 
the  relations  of  morals  to  reUgion  and  to  politics.  The 
political  Power  realises  the  external  conditions  of  morality ; 
the  divine  Virtue,  conceived  as  the  spring  of  all  ideals, 
realises  the  internal  conditions.  Since  the  realising  of  the 
moral  value  in  action  consists  essentially  in  an  act  of  will, 
which  is  internal  and  spiritual,  and  material  and  external 
conformity  derives  its  value  from  that,  the  pohtical 
Power  may  then  appear  to  the  rehgious  conscience  as  if 
it  were  the  means  and  instrument  of  the  rehgious  Power. 
This    view,    however,    is    corrected    for    the    rehgious 


V]  THE    SOLUTION    OF   JUVALTA  89 

conscience  itself  when  it  is  brought  to  recognise  that  the 
external  legislation  finds  its  justification  in  that  same 
fundamental  ethical  requirement  in  the  name  of  which 
the  conscience  recognises  the  supreme  value  of  its  own 
ideal  and  the  divine  authority  of  the  Power  in  which  it 
is  fully  realised.  The  requirement  consists  in  respect  for 
the  human  person  as  the  spring  of  all  ethical  value ;  and 
impUes  that  hberty  which  conscience  cannot  deny  to 
another  without  making  its  ov\-n  liberty  an  object  of 
contempt. 

This  separation  of  the  political  Power  and  of  external 
legislation  from  every  particular  rehgious  faith,  is  from 
an  objective  point  of  view  not  less  inevitable  than  its 
independence,  already  noted,  of  every  particular  ideal 
that  presents  itself  as  moral.  For  the  certitude  of  every 
religious  faith  is  a  psychological  certitude  in  the  person 
holding  it.  But  to  recognise  this  inward  and  personal 
character  by  which  a  faith  is  at  once  indemonstrable  and 
beyond  the  reach  of  external  criticism,  does  not  strip  the 
various  faiths  and  ideals  of  the  tendency  to  deny  and 
exclude  their  opposites.  This  very  diversity  of  valuations, 
each  claiming  universal  validity,  is  the  source  of  all 
increase  of  culture  and  of  all  spiritual  elevation.  It  is 
the  values  for  which  the  pohtical  Power  stands,  the 
universal  moral  values  of  liberty  and  justice,  that  impose 
limits  on  the  conflict.  In  relation  to  the  dignity  of  man, 
which  consists  in  the  affirmation  of  his  spiritual  aims, 
liberty  comes  before  life.  Liberum  esse  hominem  est 
necesse;   vivere  non  est  necesse. 


CHAPTER  VI 

ABSTRACT  AND   CONCRETE  ETHICS 

The  advance  of  Juvalta's  ethical  doctrine  on  Kant's 
seems  to  me  to  be  twofold.  On  the  one  side  he  reaches 
a  higher  degree  of  abstraction,  clearing  the  idea  of  moral 
law  even  in  appearance  from  all  association  with  external 
command.  On  the  other  side  he  more  expressly  recognises 
the  necessarily  empirical  character  of  all  ends.  What  is 
still  needed  is  the  recognition  that  the  doctrine  founded 
is  not,  even  potentially,  the  whole  of  ethics  according  to 
the  historical  conception  of  ethical  philosophy,  but  ethics 
in  a  certain  aspect ;  Abstract  Ethics  as  distinguished  from 
the  Art  of  Life  in  general.  From  this  again,  if  we  regard 
Abstract  Ethics  as  an  existent  doctrine,  we  must  dis- 
tinguish AppHed  or  Concrete  Ethics,  which  is  the  Art  of 
Life  in  so  far  as  considerations  of  Abstract  Ethics  deter- 
mine modifications  in  actual  conduct.  By  these  dis- 
tinctions (recapitulated  from  Chapter  III)  the  objections 
that  might  be  raised  to  the  incompleteness  of  the  guidance 
offered  towards  human  good  are  met  beforehand.  We 
perceive  that  this  in  its  fullness  is  an  affair  of  innumerable 
sciences  and  arts,  each  to  be  pursued  by  its  own  adepts; 
and  that  ethics  proper,  as  has  been  said,  is  no  more  than 
a  kind  of  logic  of  conduct.  This  cannot  enter  into  all 
the  detail  of  what  we  ought  to  do,  any  more  than  a 


CH.  Vl]      ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         91 

text-book  of  logic  can  properly  become  an  encyclopaedia 
of  human  knowledge. 

Concrete  Ethics,  as  it  has  existed  historically,  is  a 
fluctuating  subject.  What  is  most  conspicuous  in  the 
classical  works  on  ethics  is  the  extreme  variety  and  the 
mixture  of  points  of  view.  Since  in  principle  the  whole 
Art  of  Life  was  included,  and  the  Hmited  doctrine  called 
Abstract  Ethics  was  not  usually  distinguished  under  a 
special  name  from  the  rest,  there  had  to  be  selection 
from  an  infinite  subject-matter.  This  has  been  more  or 
less  arbitrary,  and  often  determined  in  later  times  merely 
by  the  established  tradition  of  discussing  certain  things 
and  not  others.  One  method  of  selection,  which  was 
especially  that  of  antiquity,  is,  under  the  direction  of 
a  certain  end  conceived  as  the  highest  good,  to  map  out 
a  mode  of  life  for  philosophers.  Here  especially  we  see 
the  resemblance  to  religion,  noted  by  Juvalta,  of  any  life 
according  to  an  ideal.  There  is  no  more  conspicuous 
example  of  this  than  Epicureanism  as  presented  by 
Lucretius  at  the  opening  of  his  sixth  Book.  Epicurus  is 
celebrated  as  the  Teacher  of  all  truth — 

Cuius  et  extincti  propter  divina  reperta 
Divulgata  vetus  iam  ad  caelum  gloria  fertur, 

who  found  mortals,  after  they  had  attained  all  material 
goods,  suffering  inwardly  from  the  sense  of  sin,  and  showed 
them  the  narrow  way  that  leads  to  the  highest  good : 

Veridicis  igitur  purgavit  pectora  dictis, 
Et  finem  statuit  cuppedinis  atque  timoris; 
Exposuitque  bonum  summum,  quo  tendimus  omnes, 
Quid  foret,  atque  viam  monstravit,  tramite  parvo 
Qua  possemus  ad  id  recto  contendere  cursu. 

But  this  good,  though  the  good  of  all,  it  is  clearly 


92  ABSTRACT    AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

seen,  will  be  sought  only  by  a  few.  And  so  approxi- 
mations to  it  are  usually  admitted;  as  indeed  also  by 
religious  teachers,  who,  recognising  that  the  mass  of 
mankind  will  not  attain  sanctity,  yet  have  something  to 
say  to  them.  Thus  with  the  Stoics  there  is  the  possibihty 
of  making  progress  to  an  end  perhaps  unattainable; 
with  the  Neo-Platonists  there  are  the  civic  virtues  for 
those  who  cannot  reach  intellectual  vision  or  mystical 
ecstasy;  and,  long  after,  Spinoza  renews  this  last  dis- 
tinction in  another  form. 

Now  it  is  interesting  that  Comte  and  Mill,  pre- 
eminently teachers  who  ground  themselves  upon  ex- 
perience, and  at  the  same  time  seekers  of  a  good  for  all, 
have  more  in  common  with  this  attitude  of  primary 
appeal  to  an  exceptional  few  than  teachers  like  Spencer^ 
or  even  Kant,  whose  bias  is  to  abstract  deduction. 
Spencer  in  particular  seems  to  have  regarded  philosophy 
simply  as  a  profession  or  employment  like  any  other, 
which  merely  happened  to  be  his  own.  Thus  we  arrive 
at  the  result,  perhaps  unexpected,  yet,  it  seems  to  me, 
quite  prepared  for  and  explained  by  Juvalta,  that  the 
doctrines  of  the  end  or  of  the  good  are  more  esoteric  than 
the  doctrines  of  law.  This  is  as  it  should  be  if  the  good 
for  different  types  is  various.  Abstract  ethics  then  be- 
comes a  kind  of  impersonal  science  of  the  conditions  under 
which  all  the  types  are  bound  to  live  in  common.  And 
the  variety  of  the  types  is  of  course  not  exhausted  in 
the  philosophic  systems  of  morals.     It  must  be  recognised, 

^  Of  all  the  great  English  experientialists,  Spencer,  it  is  generally- 
recognised,  comes  nearest  to  philosophic  rationalism.  And  as,  in 
common  with  Hobbes,  he  had  a  stronger  system-building  impulse  than 
the  others,  so  also  he  is  to  be  classed  with  Hobbes  in  so  far  as  he  at  least 
attempted  a  doctrine  of  Abstract  Ethics. 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  93 

on  the  same  general  principles  of  liberty  and  justice, 
that  the  artist,  the  man  of  letters,  the  pohtician,  the  man 
of  the  world,  the  man  of  business,  are  all  entitled  to  their 
own  manuals  of  conduct.  But  evidently  none  of  these 
could  become  manuals  for  schools;  and  no  more  can 
ethical  doctrines  of  the  good.  To  follow  with  intelligence 
discriminations  among  the  kinds  of  goods  requires  re- 
latively mature  experience.  To  follow  the  outhnes  of  a 
fairly  easy  abstract  deduction  does  not.  Hence,  apart 
from  its  interest  among  the  philosophical  sciences,  the 
special  province  reserved  for  abstract  ethics  seems  to  be 
that  of  furnishing  the  basis  for  moral  education  under  the 
conditions  of  the  modern  State.  This  was  very  clearly 
perceived  by  Renouvier,  who,  from  the  starting-point  of 
his  own  Kantianism,  went  some  way  towards  fulfilling 
the  demand  for  a  popular  and  teachable  doctrine.  That 
Comte's  or  Mill's  doctrine  could  not  equally  well  have 
furnished  this  basis  ought  to  be  evident  at  a  glance. 
It  is  precisely  the  abstract  character  of  the  moral  law 
that  adapts  it  to  be  taught  first,  hke  geometry  in  a 
scientific  curriculum.  And  the  doctrine  of  the  good, 
apart  from  the  theoretical  objection  to  it  if  it  claims  to 
estabhsh  by  itself  the  supreme  norms  of  conduct,  cannot 
be  made  an  affair  of  abstract  deduction.  Nor  can  it,  of 
course,  like  the  beginnings  of  the  physical  sciences,  be 
made  an  afiair  of  easy  experiment. 

Renouvier's  contention,  that  no  doctrine  of  the  good, 
however  elevated,  can,  in  the  absence  of  a  priori  principles 
of  justice,  make  liberty  secure,  must  I  think  be  admitted^. 

1  This  means  that  I  no  longer  regard  my  own  attempt,  in  a  short 
paper  entitled  "The  Theory  of  Justice"  (Mind,  N.S.  iv.  99),  to  find  an 
experiential  and  evolutionary  basis,  as  pointing  the  way  to  an  adequate 
ethical  as  distinguished  from  political  solution. 


94  ABSTRACT    AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  ultimate  fault  which  he  finds 
in  the  system  of  Hobbes  is  not  the  egoism  in  itself,  but 
the  theoretical  subordination  of  the  law  placed  over  the 
individual  to  an  end  for  the  sake  of  which  the  law  exists. 
That  this  end  is  only  the  individual's  own  good  is  not  the 
essential  fault,  but  that  it  is  in  the  last  resort  above  the 
law.  Thus  the  moralists  who,  against  the  egoism  and 
individualism  postulated  by  Hobbes,  have  brought  out 
the  sympathetic  and  social  factors  in  morality  have  quite 
failed  to  establish  the  essentials  of  ethics  on  a  sounder 
basis,  great  as  may  have  been  the  value  of  their  work 
in  detail.  This  high  opinion  of  the  merits  of  Hobbes's 
solution  is  quite  confirmed  by  the  new  development  of 
Juvalta,  whose  method  resembles  that  of  Hobbes  in  so 
far  as  he  estabHshes  the  necessity  of  the  moral  law  by 
postulating  a  conflict  about  goods.  Where  he  differs  is  in 
beginning  with  the  goods  that  are  the  distinctive  ends  of 
culture,  instead  of  formulating  all,  as  Hobbes  did,  in  terms 
of  a  conflict  for  power.  The  more  primitive  conflict, 
however,  as  we  have  seen,  he  brings  in  at  the  end  in 
touching  upon  the  relation  between  morals  and  pohtics; 
and  he  finds  the  result  exactly  the  same.  For  higher  and 
lower  oppositions  ahke,  the  law  of  justice  emerges  as 
reciprocal  recognition  of  rights  to  self-affirmation.  The 
value  of  his  new  method  is  in  showing  with  special  clear- 
ness how  illusory  it  would  be  to  imagine  that  because 
in  our  psychology  we  have  transcended  egoism  and 
individualism  we  are  straightway  in  agreement  about  a 
common  good.  Nothing,  as  he  shows,  has  done  more 
to  make  a  definite  moral  rule  necessary  than  the  increased 
richness  of  modern  life  in  disinterested  ends.  For  each 
of  these,  by  itself,  tends  to  denial  of  the  others.     The 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  95 

most  apparently  disinterested  of  all,  that  of  direct  al- 
truism in  pursuit  of  the  common  good,  as  Renouvier  had 
already  pointed  out,  does  not  escape  the  danger,  too  clear 
in  the  case  of  Plato  and  Comte,  of  setting  up  a  social 
despotism  of  hierarchs  and  experts.  For  if  in  truth  ethics 
is  an  affair  of  discovering  the  means  to  an  incontestable 
final  good,  who  should  be  more  competent  to  govern  than 
those  who  know? 

Of  course  it  is  an  error  on  the  other  side  to  suppose 
that,  when  once  we  have  our  formulae  of  rights  and 
justice,  all  problems  can  be  straightway  solved  wnth  a 
modicum  of  good  will.  This  has  been  the  error  of 
revolutionists — an  error  certainly  not  too  little  insisted 
on  in  the  century  that  succeeded  the  revolutionary  age. 
My  exposition  of  the  Itahan  thinker  must,  however,  have 
made  it  clear  that  from  this  error  he  is  entirely  free. 
No  one  could  more  fully  recognise  that  there  is  no  ready- 
made  solution  of  anything,  and  that,  especially  in  pohtics, 
we  have  to  go  by  degrees  and  to  work  by  compromise. 
We  may  regret  that  the  kind  of  Rationalism  we  can  accept 
does  not  give  us  quasi-mathematical  formulae  to  be  apphed 
with  confidence  to  all  cases  by  logical  deduction ;  but  we 
all  admit  that  it  does  not.  And  yet  we  must  insist  that 
the  old  formulae  were  attempts  to  express  eternal  principles 
that  can  never  again  pass  wholly  out  of  view. 

Whatever  varying  expression  they  may  find,  the 
principles  of  "eternal  and  immutable  morahty"  form  the 
subject  of  Abstract  Ethics.  It  is  conceivable,  though 
quite  remote  from  the  facts,  that  these  might  have  no 
apphcation  in  the  actual  world.  This  supposition  would 
be  reahsed  if  there  were  no  active  relations  among  persons ; 
if  each  person  could  pursue  his  own  good  without  the 


96  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

least  chance  of  hindering  or  helping,  or  being  helped  or 
hindered  by,  any  one  else.  In  that  case,  the  condition  of 
rational  action  would  be  simply  to  construct  a  scale  of 
goods.  The  term  "justice,"  if  used  at  all,  might  be  used 
in  the  sense  suggested  by  Plato,  namely,  the  performance 
of  its  own  function  by  each  part  of  the  soul  in  the  relation 
towards  the  other  functions  necessary  for  the  best  in- 
ternal life.  Abstract  Ethics,  or  the  theory  of  justice  in 
society  and  the  State,  might  then  be  thought  out  as  a 
subject  of  intellectual  curiosity  about  what  ought  to  exist 
if  mutual  interferences  were  possible  by  persons  seeking 
their  own  good.  Its  existence  would  be  entirely  in  an 
ideal  world.  But  clearly  this  ideal  world,  that  could  be 
imagined  for  pastime  by  self-evolving  intellectual  monads, 
is  our  actual  world.  A  world  in  which  there  would  be  no 
need  for  anything  but  an  Art  of  Life  to  construct  a  scale 
of  goods  is  more  remote  from  all  that  we  know  than  the 
world  of  Abstract  Ethics.  This  therefore,  in  spite  of  all 
difficulty  in  applying  it,  is  that  which  gives  its  practical 
bearing  to  the  study  of  moral  philosophy. 

But  of  what  nature  is  the  application  in  a  world  where 
there  is  at  once  co-operation  and  conflict  ?  This  has  been 
partly  determined  already.  On  our  present  view,  it  is 
clearer  than  ever  that  we  cannot  work  downwards  from 
abstract  ethics  to  all  the  detail,  constructing  the  moral 
life  as  we  go  on  from  first  principles.  The  application  of 
abstract  ethics  is  to  a  life  of  the  pursuit  of  ends  that  may 
be  arranged  in  a  scale  of  goods,  but  certainly  difier  for 
different  persons  and  have  fluctuating  relations  for  the 
same  person.  On  this  complex  that  it  did  not  and  cannot 
create,  the  ethical  norm  has  to  impose  limits;  and  these 
limits   are   perceived,    when    considered,    to   be   strictly 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE   ETHICS  97 

obligatory.  But  clearly,  on  this  view,  it  would  be  quite 
wrong  to  take  as  our  ever-present  aim  simply  to  be  moral 
in  the  sense  of  conforming  to  the  moral  law.  For  what  is 
creative  in  life  we  must  appeal  to  the  principle  of  love  in 
the  widest  sense,  and  this  is  spontaneous.  It  is  this, 
psychologically,  that  must  normally  give  us  the  impulse 
even  to  be  just;  but,  as  justice  does  not  determine  our 
positive  ends,  so  love  does  not  determine  the  hmit  and  the 
obhgation^.  Complete  unification  is  therefore  impossible ; 
and  yet  there  are  not  two  worlds  standing  apart.  Between 
ends  or  goods  on  the  one  side  and  law  on  the  other,  there 
is  an  intermediate  doctrine — or  rather  there  are  doctrines 
— of  Concrete  Ethics,  varying  from  age  to  age. 

By  way  of  illustration,  I  propose  to  discuss  a  few 
questions  of  Concrete  or  Applied  Ethics.  If  the  results 
have  no  particular  symmetry,  this  ought  perhaps  to  be, 
as  Mr  Moore  said  of  some  examples  in  Principia  Ethica, 
a  commendation  of  them  to  those  who  are  suspicious  of 
abstract  doctrine. 

First,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  productive  and  de- 
structive arts  that  go  under  the  collective  names  of 
Industrialism  and  Militarism?  Obviously  these  are  in 
the  main  an  affair  of  knowledge  and  skill  working  with  a 
view  to  ends  under  tacitly  understood  conventions.  None 
of  them  could  be  called  in  themselves  branches  of  ethics, 
and  yet  they  fill  a  very  large  portion  of  life.     The  part 

^  That  is  why  Kant  insisted  so  strongly  that  duty,  in  the  moral 
ideal,  must  be  able  to  subsist  independently  of  affections.  He  did  not 
mean,  as  was  sometimes  supposed,  that  a  right  action  done  without 
affection  or  with  repugnance  is  more  meritorious  for  that  reason;  but 
simply  that  a  right  action  is  that  which  is  done,  and  would  be  done 
with  intention,  because  it  is  objectively  right,  whatever  the  agent's 
feelings  might  be. 

W.  E.  7 


98  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

assignable  to  them  is  probably  under  modern  conditions 
not  less  than  the  "three- fourths,"  if  it  does  not  amount 
to  the  "nine- tenths,"  once  assigned  to   "conduct."     Is 
there  then  any  moral  rule  generally  apphcable  to  them? 
Some  might  say  that  obviously  "efficiency"  is  the  supreme 
rule ;   but  this  seems  to  me,  if  we  are  thinking  in  relation 
to  a  permanent  social  ideal,  more  than  doubtful.     The 
moral    rule,    consisting   in    some    refinement   of   justice, 
would  probably  apply  to  them  the  maxims  of  the  mean 
and  of  "nothing  too  much."     Aristotle,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  end  or  the  good,  discountenanced  over- 
speciaHsm  in  the  acquirement  of  technical  accomplish- 
ments, because  this  was  inconsistent  with  the  ideal  of 
the  "all-round"  man,  such  as  a  freeman  should  desire  to 
become.     The  same  general  position  might  be  deduced 
from  the  rule  of  abstract  ethics.     By  that  rule,  we  try  to 
avoid  doing  in  the  society  of  others  what  we  should  not 
wish  others  to  do.     Now  clearly  if  every  one  is  to  strain  > 
after  the  utmost  degree  of  accompUshment  in  the  hghter 
things,  the  amenity  of  life  will  be  reduced  for  all.     Thus 
the  application  of  the  rule  will  be,  to  leave  some  margin 
of  power  unused;    and  therefore  it  seems  not  altogether 
a  blameable  form  of  affectation  to  affect  to  do  things 
easily.     In  an  ideal  social  order  it  seems  to  me  that  this 
would  be  carried  over  to  the  useful  arts.     The  pursuit 
of  too  great  efficiency  would  be  avoided  in  order  to  leave 
a  reserve  of  vitahty  for  leisure.     Here,  we  are  directly 
considering  the  end;    but  the  rule  of  justice  is  plainly 
applicable  in  the  form  of  the  Kantian  maxim,  not  to  treat 
oneself  or  others  as  a  mere  means.     For  how  can  any  one 
be  treated  more  as  a  mere  means  than  by  the  employment 
of  all  his  strength  in  the  practice  of  some  useful  art  ? 


Vl]  ABSTRACT    AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  99 

Of  course,  as  in  all  things,  the  existence  of  a  state  of 
declared  war  modifies  the  rule.  Efficiency  then  has  to 
become  dominant,  especially  if  the  enemy  has  cultivated 
it  both  in  military  and  industrial  affairs  to  the  highest 
point.  But  again,  when  we  turn  our  thoughts  to  the 
state  of  things  after  war,  we  have  to  remember  that,  as 
Aristotle  said,  war  is  for  the  sake  of  peace;  and  that 
strenuous  industrialism  under  armed  peace,  if  no  more 
than  that  were  achieved  at  the  close,  would  only  be 
another  form  of  war.  It  would  be  a  form,  we  must  add, 
in  which  the  nobler  competition  for  the  higher  goods 
would  be  permanently  instead  of  temporarily  eclipsed. 
The  ideal  of  our  foes  would  have  conquered. 

Even  in  a  state  of  war,  the  older  ideals  of  honour  and 
chivalry  were  an  application  of  a  law  of  more  refined 
justice,  and  not  of  efficiency;  for  they  consisted  in  not 
using  power  to  the  full,  in  giving  the  advantage  of  a 
conventional  rule  in  case  of  doubt  to  one's  opponent  or 
competitor  and  not  to  oneself. 

If,  as  is  possible,  these  ideals,  Greek  or  romantic,  of 
a  world  that  had  emerged  or  was  emerging  from  bar- 
barism, should  ever  by  general  consent  be  restored  in 
a  new  form,  clearly  it  is  only  ways  of  thinking  and  feeling 
enlightened  by  philosophy  that  can  restore  them.  No 
science  and  no  speciahsm — as  the  ancients  saw  clearly 
enough  when  there  was  much  less  of  them — can  be  any- 
thing but  instrumental.  In  the  absence  of  sufficient  philo- 
sophy, knowledge  how  to  do  things  may  even  be  pernicious^. 

^  Its  compensation  comes,  if  not  otherwise,  then  through  the  working 
of  the  cosmic  powers.  A  world- war,  by  setting  back  "dispersive 
specialism"  except  as  applied  to  the  destructive  arts,  may  do  the  work 
assigned  by  Comte  to  his  priesthood  of  Humanity,  and  prepare  the  way 
for  the  renewed  influence  of  general  ideas. 

7—2 


100  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

On  the  other  side,  an  ethical  view  of  this  kind  may 
become    overstrained    if    appUed    to    action    when    the 
condition    of    conflict    is    perpetual    and    no    reciprocal 
moderation  can  be  expected  from  antagonists.     By  such 
overstraining  we  get  the  scrupulously  faultless  persons 
treated  with  scorn  by  Carlyle,  and  in  one  typical  case 
condemned  by  Dante  to  the  vestibule  of  Hell.     After  all, 
the  end  of  action  is  to  produce  some  effect,  and  it  is  some- 
times not  morally  permissible  to  consider  too  curiously. 
The  judgment  of  the  world,  however,  is  in  the  long  run 
lenient  to   the  scrupulous   even   when   they  have  been 
rather  futile,   and  is   often  unjust  to  those  who   have 
pushed  devotion  to  ends  to  excess  without  regard  for  the 
ethical  hmit.     Apologies  are  still  needed — and  still  forth- 
coming— for  Machiavelli's  abstraction  from  moral   con- 
siderations in  his  discussion  of  the  modes  of  obtaining 
and  preserving  political  powder.     This,  impartially  Ci&n- 
sidered,  seems  to  be  a  case  in  which  we  may  rightly  blame 
the   world    as   it   actually    was   rather   than    the    man. 
Machiavelli  did  not  invent  the  methods  he  analyses,  and 
he  does  not   defend  them   as   just.     He   nowhere   calls 
good  evil  and  evil  good.     He  simply  discusses,  without 
sophistication  and  with  the  insight  of  a  practical  thinker, 
what  a  prince  or  a  people  must  do  for  self-preservation 
and  aggrandisement  in  a  world  where  moral  hmits  are 
disregarded;  and  his  end  was  a  perfectly  justifiable  one 
— the  freedom  of  his  country  from  rule  by  alien  enemies. 
Here  the  word  "justifiable"  may  be  taken  in  its  strictest 
sense,  as  that  which  was  required  by  justice.     The  alien 
enemies  were  unjust  enemies. 

Some  other  apparent  conflicts  of  ideal  ends  with  the 
most  rigorous  interpretation  of  the  moral  law  can  be 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  101 

resolved  ultimately  into  conflicts  of  duties.  For  example, 
as  Mr  F.  H.  Bradley  showed  in  his  Ethical  Studies^,  the 
most  obvious  formula  of  a  moral  hfe  is  "my  station  and 
its  duties,"  interpreted  in  a  rather  conservative  sense. 
This,  he  then  seemed  to  hold,  covers  most  of  the  ground. 
Yet,  as  he  also  showed,  devotion  to  an  individually 
selected  ideal  end,  even  when  it  involves  some  neglect  or 
disregard  of  more  obvious  duties,  cannot  be  finally  con- 
demned as  immoral.  Kant,  discussing  what  is  substantially 
the  same  case  in  the  Grundlegung  zur  Metaphysik  der  Sitten, 
found  it  to  be  in  general  a  duty  (given  the  capacity)  to 
choose  the  more  elevated  end — the  end  of  progress  in  dis- 
tinction from  mere  conservation.  Not  to  aim  at  the  higher 
good  would  be  an  actual  neglect  of  duty.  The  argument 
of  course  is  from  what  you  would  desire  that  others  should 
do — or  not  leave  undone — in  similar  circumstances. 

In  association  rather  than  logical  connexion  with  this 
topic,  the  controversy  about  "art  for  art"  suggests  itself. 
Though  now  silent,  it  is  still  interesting,  and  it  may 
revive  again.  The  artists  who  took  up  the  formula  seem 
to  have  been  perfectly  right  in  so  far  as  they  insisted 
that  art  is  one  of  the  absolute  values  in  human  hfe,  not 
reducible  to  anything  else.  Their  appeal,  however,  was 
fundamentally  to  ethics  in  a  sufiiciently  abstracted  and 
generahsed  sense.  The  "morahsts"  against  whom  they 
appealed  were  those  who  had  regard  only  to  a  very 
restricted  order  of  values ;  who  were  setting  up  a  certain 
Umited  social  ideal  of  their  time  and  country,  and 
factitiously  transferring  to  this  the  feeling  of  obligation 
that  properly   attaches   itself   only   to   the   eternal   and 

1  Dating  from  1876,  and  not,  I  believe,  representing  in  all  respects 
Mr  Bradley's  present  views. 


102  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

immutable  principles.  The  reason  of  the  antagonism  was 
in  fact  that  the  most  authorised  morahsts  had  no  principle 
but  that  of  the  end,  and  therefore  felt  bound  to  see  no 
virtue  but  in  their  own  type.  The  more  rigorous  system 
can  be  more  hberal.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
moral  law,  the  justice  of  the  claim  to  pursue  beauty  or 
truth  as  an  end  in  itself,  when  once  these  ends  have 
emerged  consciously,  is  plain.  And  here  there  is  a 
certain  symmetry  in  the  positions  we  have  to  take  up. 
The  artist,  on  his  side,  without  departing  from  the 
aesthetic  standard,  cannot  but  recognise  the  beauty  of 
the  moral  law;  just  as  the  purely  speculative  thinker 
must  recognise  the  truth  that  the  moral  law  exists  as  an 
ideal.  Of  course  no  actual  human  being  is  such  a  creature 
of  abstraction  as  to  come  purely  and  simpl}'^  under  one 
of  these  types;  to  be  moraUst,  artist  or  thinker  and 
nothing  else:  but  the  points  of  view  exist,  and  it  was 
important  to  have  them  distinguished,  and  even  expressed 
with  some  exclusiveness.  Only  thus  could  the  rights  of 
the  different  modes  of  life  be  estabhshed.  And  the 
artists  who  protest  against  the  intrusion  of  irrelevant 
morahties  ought  always  to  remember  that  it  was  Kant, 
the  ethical  rigorist,  who  first  gave  the  philosophy  of  the 
Beautiful  its  distinctive  and  co-equal  place  side  by  side 
with  the  philosophy  of  the  True  and  of  the  Good. 

I  now  proceed  to  discuss  more  circumstantially  two 
questions  suggested  by  Juvalta's  brief  conclusion  on  the 
relation  of  ethics  to  politics  and  religion.  I  shall  take 
first  the  question  of  religious  persecution  and  then  that  of 
international  ethics^. 

^  I  have  sometimes  called  this  also  international  law;  but,  as  will 
be  seen,  I  have  not  had  in  view  the  existing  more  or  less  recognised 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  103 

On  the  first  question  it  seems  to  me  that  the  law  of 
justice  gives  a  perfectly  clear  decision.  The  renunciation, 
in  the  introductory  chapter  of  Mill's  Liberty,  of  any 
advantage  "from  the  idea  of  abstract  right,  as  a  thing 
independent  of  utihty,"  must  be  itself  in  turn  disclaimed ; 
though  this  does  not  in  the  least  deprive  Mill's  arguments 
of  their  value  and  efficacy.  For  Mill's  appeal  is,  as  he 
said,  to  "utility  in  the  largest  sense,  grounded  on  the 
permanent  interests  of  man  as  a  progressive  being." 
And  this  appeal  was  exactly  adapted  to  meet  the  case  of 
those  who  acquiesced  in  the  policy  of  repressing  certain 
opinions  because  they  were  afraid  that  if  those  opinions 
were  to  spread  the  result  would  be  the  dissolution  of 
society.  Like  all  the  other  classical  modern  defences  of 
intellectual  liberty,  it  was  an  appeal  to  statesmen  and  men 
of  the  world.  It  differs  from  the  appeal  of  Spinoza  for 
"liberty  of  philosopliising"  only  by  introducing  the  con- 
ception of  progress  which  had  in  the  meantime  come 
decisively  into  view.  Both  arguments  equally  are 
grounded  on  the  welfare  of  the  State  and  of  human 
society.  In  Milton's  argument  for  liberty  of  the  press,  it 
may  be  noted  in  passing,  there  is  already  an  implied 
appeal  to  progress;  while  Locke,  in  his  plea  for  religious 
toleration,  is  content  if  he  can  prove  it  consistent  with 
social  and  political  order.  Now  some  speculative  ad- 
vocates of  persecution  have  put  themselves  on  the  same 
ground.  It  is  undoubtedly  for  the  sake  of  the  permanence 
and  welfare  of  the  State — his  second-best  State — that 
Plato  elaborates  his  scheme  of  an  ethical  religion  taught 

customs  and  conventions  among  nations,  in  particvilar  for  mitigating 
the  usages  of  war,  but  a  certain  ideal  of  international  morality  which 
can  be  called  "law"  because  the  relations  it  implies  are  those  of  justice. 


104  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE   ETHICS         [CH. 

by  authority  and  maintained  by  repression  of  all  opinions 
inconsistent  with  it.  The  root  of  the  historic  persecutions, 
however,  was  not  in  misunderstood  utihty.  The  scheme 
of  Plato's  Laws  had  no  influence  on  his  philosophical 
successors;  and  demonstrably  it  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  actual  policy  of  persecution  that  dominated  Europe 
later.  Yet  that  policy,  after  its  dechne,  has  sometimes 
found  retrospective  defenders  on  what  we  may  call  in 
a  very  general  sense  humanist  grounds.  Joseph  de 
Maistre,  a  really  benevolent  man,  who  wished  well  to  the 
human  race,  defended  the  Spanish  Inquisition  on  the 
express  ground  that  unity  of  dogma  secured  social  peace ; 
and  his  argument  for  the  overloidship  of  the  Papacy 
was  that  it  represented  the  ideal  of  international  law 
over  warring  kingdoms,  and  was  the  only  check  on  mis- 
government  by  monarchs  that  was  consistent  with 
pohtical  order.  This  of  course  had  been  met  historically, 
before  it  was  put  forward,  by  the  repeated  proofs  that 
insistence  on  authoritative  dogma  had  been  oftener  a 
cause  of  the  dissolution  of  States  than  of  their  conser- 
vation; but  the  reasoning  is  here  of  a  kind  that  the 
champion  of  liberty  can  reply  to  without  raising  the 
deeper  question  of  a  joriori  right.  Defenders  of  punish- 
ment for  opinion  who  reason  in  relation  to  the  good  of 
human  society  can  be  adequately  met  on  the  ground  of 
utihty,  and  could  conceivably  be  persuaded  that  they 
were  wrong. 

This  ground,  however,  if  we  find  ourselves  obliged  to 
recognise  an  a  priori  element  in  ethics,  is  not  ultimate. 
And  it  will  not  meet  every  case.  Critical  readers  have 
observed  that  Mill's  arguments  do  not  touch  "the  logical 
persecutor."     For  in  fact  the  logical  persecutor  does  not 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  105 

aim  at  any  end  of  human  society  or  of  the  State,  but  at 
the  preservation  of  a  certain  dogma  as  dogma.  He  wills 
that  this  shall  prevail,  and  he  takes  the  most  efficacious 
methods;  of  which  the  true  type  was  the  Albigensian 
Crusade  followed  by  the  Dominican  Inquisition^.  If  you 
prove,  as  Spinoza  did,  that  enforced  uniformity  of  dogma 
is  not  preservative  but  destructive  of  commonwealths, 
the  reply  he  has  in  reserve  is  that  a  commonwealth  may 
rightly  be  exterminated  for  deviation  from  the  dogma 
authoritatively  taught  by  a  corporation  that  is  above  all 
human  societies.  What  reply  have  we  then?  The  only 
adequate  reply  is  that  the  logical  persecutor  stands  for 
direct  injustice  in  the  highest  things.  He  is  not  an 
opponent  with  whom  it  is  possible  to  reason,  but  an 
"unjust  enemy"  in  a  deeper  sense  than  that  in  which 
Kant's  phrase  can  be  applied  to  a  hostile  nation  or 
potentate.  For,  professedly  regarding  belief  in  what  he 
holds  for  truth  as  the  highest  thing  in  himself,  he  makes 
it  his  aim  systematically  to  repress  the  beliefs  of  others. 
If  there  is  injustice  at  all,  it  is  here;  and,  if  we  carry  our 
ethics  into  metaphysics,  it  may  be  said  to  be  a  sin  against 
eternal  justice. 

From  this,  the  clearest  possible  case  of  the  direct 
application  of  abstract  ethics,  the  question  of  inter- 
national law  differs  in  being  perhaps  the  most  complicated 
case.  It  depends  not  only  on  knowledge,  but  even  on 
a  behef,  or  the  possibiUty  of  a  belief,  that  may  be  called 
metaphysical.     And  yet  Kant,  who  himself  pointed  out 

1  The  Spanish  Inquisition,  as  M.  Salomon  Rcinach  has  shown,  is 
wrongly  taken  as  typical,  for  its  motives  were  not  purely  dogmatic  and 
its  methods  were  in  some  respects  relatively  lenient :  see  Cultes,  Mythea 
et  Religions,  ii.  401-417  ("L' Inquisition  et  les  Juifs");  cf.  iii.  472-509 
("L' Inquisition  d'Espagne"). 


106  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

this,  regarded  it  as  deducible,  certain  postulates  being 
granted,  from  the  law  of  justice.  The  difficulty  of  the 
case  will  appear  if  we  contrast  Kant's  view  with  Spinoza's. 
Spinoza  did  not  admit  any  valid  international  law  or 
ethics  at  all ;  and  this  seemed  to  him  to  follow  rigorously 
from  his  system,  of  which  the  "statical"  character  is 
not  always  kept  sufficiently  in  view.  Nations,  he  holds, 
are  in  the  "state  of  nature"  with  regard  to  one  another. 
In  this  state  there  is  neither  justice  nor  injustice,  but  the 
rights  of  all  extend  as  far  as  their  power.  Since  this  is 
so  now,  it  will  always  be  so ;  because  the  universe  mani- 
fests at  all  times  all  degrees  of  perfection  that  are  possible ; 
and  (this  seems  to  be  implied)  we  have  no  reason  for 
supposing  the  earth  to  be  better  or  worse  in  the  kinds  of 
manifestations  it  offers  than  any  other  inhabited  globe  if 
such  exists.  From  time  to  time  individuals  appear  who 
Hve  by  the  dictate  of  reason  and  succeed  in  attaining 
the  ideal  of  "the  free  man."  From  time  to  time  also 
free  States  arise  (democracies  or  aristocracies  or  limited 
monarchies),  and  these  are  better  than  States  despotically 
ruled.  When  they  have  come  to  exist  they  can  be  pre- 
served for  a  period  by  human  wisdom ;  but  the  general 
distribution  of  types  of  men  and  States  will  not  change^. 
Now  international  law,  from  this  point  of  view,  was  an 
institution  in  its  nature  chimerical;  and  Spinoza  puts  it 
in  the  most  precise  terms  that  States  simply  have  no 

1  Tractatus  Politicus,  i.  3:  "Et  sane  milii  plane  persuadeo,  ex- 
perientiam  omnia  civitatum  genera,  quae  coneipi  possunt,  ut  homines 
concorditer  vivant,  et  simul  media,  quibus  multitude  dirigi  seu  quibus 
intra  certos  limites  contineri  debeat,  ostendisse;  ita  ut  non  credam, 
nos  posse  aliquid,  quod  ab  experientia  sive  praxi  non  abhorreat, 
cogitatione  de  hac  re  assequi,  quod  nondum  expertum  compertumque 
sit." 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  107 

ground  of  complaint  against  each  other  for  injustice. 
Probably  he  thought  it  useful  to  warn  a  small  free  State 
like  Holland  that  it  would  be  mere  folly  to  expect  the 
faith  of  treaties  to  be  observed  when  they  had  ceased  to 
be  to  the  advantage  of  a  more  powerful  State  that  had 
entered  into  them^.  This,  I  admit,  is  an  interpretation 
developed  a  little  beyond  the  text ;  but  I  think  it  defends 
Spinoza  from  the  charge  of  "  immorahsm  "  which  has  been 
brought  against  his  doctrine  of  international  politics-. 
It  is  not  immoral  to  abandon  the  attempt  to  realise  what 
we  know  from  the  nature  of  things  can  never  be;  and 
Spinoza  thought  he  had  apodictic  certainty. 

Now  Kant's  opinion,  though  this  is  not  obvious  on 
the  surface,  was  not  at  all  that  such  a  view  of  the  universe 
must  be  decisively  rejected.  In  fact,  he  seems  to  have 
held  it  quite  possibly  true^.  But,  he  holds,  it  cannot 
be  dogmatically  asserted.  And  undoubtedly  we  should 
desire,  if  this  were  possible,  that  the  moral  law  recognised 
within  States  should  be  extended  to  their  mutual  relations. 
The  end  to  be  desired  then  is  a  state  of  perpetual  peace. 
It  is  not  a  duty  to  believe  in  the  attainabiUty  of  this; 
for  there  is  no  obligation  to  hold  any  belief*.     The  duty 

^  Tractatus  Politicus,  iii.  14. 

2  He  himself  was  one  of  the  apologists  of  Machiavelli,  of  whom  he 
says  (Tract.  Pol.  v.  7)  that,  even  if  we  do  not  know  what  his  aim  was, 
it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  so  wise  a  man  had  some  good  end  in 
view.  Still  more  may  this  be  assumed  of  Spinoza;  who  certainly 
would  not  have  wished  to  inspire  Bismarck,  though  it  is  possible  that 
his  teaching  on  this  subject  may  have  had  that  effect. 

3  There  is  just  as  much  genuine  science  in  anything  as  there  is 
application  of  mathematics ;  and  the  reality  behind  the  appearance  of 
final  causes  may  be  mechanism.  (See  Metaphysische  Anfangsgriinde  der 
Naturwissenschaft  and  Kritik  der  Urtheilskraff.) 

*  Metaphysische  Anfangsgriinde  der  Rechtslehre,  2  Theil,  3  Abschnitt, 
Beschluss. 


108  ABSTRACT    AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

is  to  act  in  accordance  with  the  idea  of  the  end,  so  long  as 
its  impossibility  cannot  be  demonstrated.  And  he  held 
it  possible,  consistently  with  what  can  be  demonstrated 
metaphysically,  to  believe  that  through  the  historical 
process  (supposed  teleological)  a  permanently  superior 
order  of  political  society  will  be  attained  as  compared 
with  the  past.  Essentially  it  is  on  the  ground  of  such  a 
postulate  of  progress,  inadmissible  for  Spinoza,  that  Kant  is 
able  to  carry  the  rule  of  justice  into  international  relations. 
Kant's  ideal  of  those  relations  was  not  peace  on  any 
terms,  more  especiallyv^not  under  a  world-State,  but  peace 
among  free  States  recognising  one  another's  equal  rights 
to  an  independent  life  of  their  own.  Even  a  federal 
woi  Id-State  he  held  to  be  inconsistent  with  this.  His 
ideal  was  not  federalism,  but  "  federality,"  which  meant 
fluctuating  arrangements  among  States  to  keep  the  peace, 
but  without  any  central  tribunal  possessing  coercive 
powers.  Schemes  of  modern  pacificists  that  suppose  a 
fixed  organisation  like  that  of  a  federal  union  can  find  no 
support  in  Kant.  Doubtless  he  would  have  thought  no 
international  law  at  all  better  than  a  system  of  this  kind; 
for  in  an  anarchy  of  States  each  can  fight  for  its  own  free 
existence  when  threatened,  and  may  find  allies;  whereas 
an  international  organisation  strong  enough  to  keep  the 
peace  by  force  would  be  in  effect  a  world-State.  And 
that,  in  Kant's  opinion,  was  a  sinister  dream.  Inter- 
national law,  in  his  view,  must  always  remain  essentially 
international  ethics,  with  no  sanction  except  in  opinion 
and  feeling  and  the  possibihty  of  forming  aUiances  against 
aggression.  Necessarily  therefore  the  fundamental  con- 
dition of  his  "perpetual  peace"  was  that  the  internal  life 
of  each  national  State  must  be  completely  self-directed. 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  109 

On  the  whole,  I  do  not  think  it  possible  at  present 
to  add  anything  important  to  the  conditions  of  Kant. 
The  element  of  abstract  ethics  in  his  theory,  it  may  be 
observed,  is  this :  that  the  norms  which  present  them- 
selves, after  long  experience  of  social  and  political  order, 
as  rules  that  ought  to  be  observed  also  between  States, 
are  the  rules  of  justice.  States  ought  to  recognise  one 
another's  rights  to  existence  as  if  they  were  equal  persons. 
Now  this  mutual  recognition  of  personal  rights  is  proper  to 
polities  in  a  general  sense  republican.  Hence  only  among 
States  republican  in  this  sense  (which  includes  consti- 
tutional but  not  despotic  monarchies)  does  Kant  expect 
the  international  ideal  he  has  sketched  in  outline  to  be 
permanently  recognised.  The  question  then  finally  is, 
Can  we  expect  that  this  republican  ideal  will  prevail? 
If  so,  we  have  grounds  for  believing  in  progress  towards 
perpetual  peace.  Kant  believed  in  it^ ;  but  the  theo- 
retical position  he  thought  necessary  and  sustainable  was 
merely  that  it  is  not  metaphysically  excluded.  His 
doctrine  therefore  amounts  to  scepticism,  but  a  scepticism 
certainly  not  unfavourable  to  action. 

Before  leaving  the  subject,  it  will  be  interesting  to  set 
out  briefly  Kant's  expressions  of  opinion  on  the  attempt 
of  any  single  State  to  continue  the  method  of  aiming  at 
union  by  subjugating  other  States  instead  of  seeking  to 
live  at  peace  with  them.  It  is  the  duty  of  States,  he  says, 
since  the  possibility  of  this  is  not  excluded,  to  endeavour 
to  estabHsh  permanent  peace  with  one  another.     To  will 

1  Kant's  faith  in  the  potency  of  the  republican  ideal  is  very  definitely 
expressed  in  a  passage  of  the  Rechtslehre,  §  52:  "Dies  ist  die  einzige 
bleibende  Staatsverfassung,  wo  das  Gesetz  selbstherrschend  ist  und  an 
keiner  besonderen  Person  hangt." 


110  ABSTRACT    AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS         [CH. 

otherwise  is  to  will  injustice;  for  the  condition  of  war 
is  that  of  injustice.  What  then,  among  nations,  is  an 
"unjust  enemy" ?  "It  is  that  of  which  the  will,  publicly- 
expressed  (by  word  or  deed),  betrays  a  maxim  according 
to  which,  if  it  were  made  a  general  rule,  no  state  of  peace 
among  peoples  would  be  possible,  but  the  state  of  nature 
must  be  perpetuated^."  Under  this  definition  comes  the 
violation  of  public  treaties.  This  concerns  all  peoples, 
whose  freedom  is  thereby  threatened,  and  who  are  called 
upon  to  unite  themselves  and  take  away  the  power  of 
such  action  from  the  people  that  is  guilty  of  the  wrong. 
Yet  this  does  not  imply  the  right  to  make  a  State  vanish 
from  the  earth;  for  that  would  be  injustice  against  the 
people,  which  cannot  lose  its  original  right  to  combine 
into  a  commonwealth;  though  it  may  be  required  to 
adopt  a  new  constitution  unfavourable  to  the  disposition 
to  war. 

Some  formal  qualifications  follow ;  as  that  in  the  state 
of  nature,  which  is  the  state  of  war,  all  are  in  their  degree 
unjust.  "The  expression  'an  unjust  enemy'  is  in  the 
state  of  nature  pleonastic;  for  the  state  of  nature  is 
itself  a  state  of  injustice."  This,  however,  does  not 
modify  the  substance  of  Kant's  judgment,  which  refers  to 
an  aggressive  return  to  the  state  of  nature  after  it  has 
been  mitigated  by  agreements. 

In  concluding  the  chapter,  a  word  must  be  said  on 
a  topic  which  Kant  is  sometimes  blamed  for  excluding 
from  his  ethics  altogether.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that, 
in  common  with  other  thinkers  much  influenced  by 
Stoicism,  he  regards  animals,  because  "irrational,"  as 
not  properly  having  "rights."     Yet,  by  drawing  certain 

^  Metaphysische  Anfangsgrilnde  der  Rechtslehre,  §  60. 


Vl]  ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS  111 

formal  distinctions,  he  is  able  to  recognise  duties  "in 
relation  to"  animals.  It  is  part  of  man's  "duty  to 
himself"  not  to  weaken  sympathetic  feeling  by  cruel 
treatment  of  them.  In  putting  them  to  death,  as  httle 
pain  as  possible  is  to  be  inflicted ;  they  are  not  to  be 
worked  beyond  their  strength ;  and  the  unnecessary  use  of 
painful  experiments  for  the  sake  of  mere  speculative 
knowledge  is  to  be  reprobated.  "Even  gratitude  for  the 
long-rendered  services  of  an  old  horse  or  dog  (as  if  they 
were  house- companions)  belongs  indirectly  to  the  duty  of 
man  in  relation  to  the  animals;  directly  considered,  it 
remains  only  a  duty  of  man  towards  himself^." 

We  may  not  find  this  enough:  it  does  not  go  as  far 
as  Pythagoreanism  or  even  as  Positivism ;  but  I  think  in 
some  reports  of  Kant's  doctrine  the  passage  has  been 
left  out  of  view.  The  general  position  of  his  abstract 
ethics,  that  animals  are  to  be  regarded  as  means  not 
ends,  and  therefore  as  things  not  persons,  has  probably 
effaced  a  detail  that  only  comes  into  his  concrete  ethics. 
I  do  not  find  the  position  even  here  quite  satisfactory; 
but  Kant's  restrictions  on  the  conception  of  right  do  not 
seem  to  me  to  follow  from  the  general  notion  of  abstract 
ethics.  The  broader  view  of  Juvalta  about  ends  would 
certainly  (though  he  does  not  discuss  the  question)  allow 
a  general  deduction  of  maxims  of  justice,  and  not  merely 
of  benevolence,  towards  animals.  For  animals  have  a 
resemblance  to  persons  in  so  far  as  they  are  ends  for 

^  I  cite  the  passage  with  Kant's  italics,  by  which  he  indicates  technical 
distinctions  about  which  he  is  careful:  "Selbst  Dankbarkeit  fiir  lang 
geleistete  Dienste  eines  alten  Pferdes  oder  Hundes  (gleich  ala  ob  sie 
Hausgenossen  waren)  gehort  indirect  zur  Pflicht  des  Menschen,  naralich 
in  Ansehung  dieser  Thiere,  direct  aber  betrachtet  ist  sie  immer  nur 
Pflicht  des  Menschen  gegen  sich  selbst"  (Tugendlehre,  §  17). 


112       ABSTRACT   AND    CONCRETE    ETHICS      [CH.  VI 

themselves  though  unconsciously.  Their  "supreme  end" 
we  may  call  self-conservation,  including  the  "values" 
involved  in  feehngs  of  vitahty  and  pleasures  of  perception. 
Hence  they  ought  to  be  treated  with  something  resembling 
the  regard  paid  to  persons.  They  may  be  considered  as 
having  a  right  not  to  be  unnecessarily  injured  or  thwarted 
in  their  natural  activities. 

Whether  it  would  make  much  difference  actually  if 
they  were  considered  only  as  subjects  of  benevolence 
I  do  not  know.  Comte,  who  did  not  recognise  "rights" 
but  only  "duties,"  gives  an  important  place  to  the  do- 
mestic animals  as  a  subordinate  portion  of  the  great 
organism  which  is  Humanity.  And,  in  a  speculation  at 
the  end  of  the  Tugendlehre  on  the  constitution  of  the 
universe,  Kant  himself  throws  out  the  conjecture  that 
Love  must  be  conceived  as  creating  the  world  and  Justice 
as  only  the  hmiting  condition^.  This  he  regards  as  lying 
beyond  the  bounds  of  ethics  and  leaving  for  reason  an 
insoluble  problem.  Yet,  before  meeting  with  the  passage 
in  Kant,  I  had  arrived  at  the  idea  not  in  this  transcendent 
sense,  but  as  a  possible  formula  for  the  life  of  Humanity. 
I  have  already  put  it,  as  it  presented  itself  to  me,  in  dis- 
cussing the  relations  of  End  and  Law.  The  result  seems 
to  be  that  the  active  thing  in  conduct  is  always  in  some 
form  love  directed  to  an  end.  If  then  in  one  sense  the 
law  is  supreme,  in  another  sense  the  end  is  supreme.  In 
hfe  it  is  probably  best,  whenever  it  is  possible,  that  the 
end  should  be  consciously  and  the  hmit  unconsciously 
reahsed. 

^  In  this  "Schlussbemerkung,"  Eternal  Justice  is  described  as  not 
really  personal,  but  only  personified  in  the  theistic  conception,  and  is 
compared  to  the  Fate  of  the  ancient  philosophical  poets. 


CHAPTER   VII 

METAPHYSICAL  CONCLUSION 

At  this  point,  if  we  are  to  make  progress,  it  seems  to 
me  necessary  to  diverge  from  Kant.  By  the  method  of 
the  Practical  Reason,  nothing  can  be  done  in  metaphysics. 
I  am  one  of  those  who,  after  reading  the  more  subtly 
speculative  passages  there  and  elsewhere,  find  themselves 
led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  theological  positions  laid 
down  by  Kant,  so  far  as  they  coincide  with  ordinary 
theism,  are  exoteric.  Indeed  he  tells  us  this  himself 
sometimes  almost  in  so  many  words.  What  is  essentially 
unsatisfactory  in  his  procedure  is  that,  after  setting  forth 
evidently  with  the  deepest  conviction  "the  autonomy  of 
ethics,"  he  appears  to  be  justifying  his  ethical  doctrine 
retrospectively  by  a  theoretical  doctrine  which  we  are  to 
choose,  as  against  another  equally  possible,  simply  on  the 
ground  of  the  ethics.  And  yet  he  himself,  as  we  have 
seen,  admits  that  no  beUef  is  obhgatory.  To  try  to 
defend  all  this,  with  whatever  skill  it  may  be  done,  can 
lead  only  to  fresh  perplexities.  No  further  insight  is 
attainable  within  the  system. 

The  new  departure  I  propose  is  to  treat  the  ethical 

w.  E.  8 


114  METAPHYSICAL   CONCLUSION  [CH. 

doctrine  arrived  at  as  established,  and  as  needing  no 
foundation  outside  ethics;  to  admit  nevertheless  that  it 
raises  metaphysical  questions  beyond  itself  which,  if  we 
were  not  moral  beings,  we  should  not  put;  and  then  to 
seek  the  answer  to  these  as  questions  of  speculative 
truth.  That  is,  we  again  treat  them  as  ontological 
questions:  but  we  acknowledge  that  the  terms  in  which 
we  ask  them  could  not  have  been  primarily  derived  from 
any  intellectual  determinations  of  pure  being;  and  that 
the  Kantian  analysis  has  enabled  us  to  understand  much 
better  our  own  meaning  in  asking  them. 

First,  however,  we  must  know  clearly  what  can  be 
arrived  at  before  any  question  is  put  that  involves  ethical 
terms.  And  here  I  think  we  cannot  do  better  than  recur 
to  Hume  and  then  find  if  anything  is  added  or  taken 
away  by  Comte.  Metaphysical  positions,  if  such  exist, 
that  are  left  standing  by  Hume  and  Comte  seem  not 
unlikely  to  prove  indestructible. 

The  metaphysical  positions  we  are  now  interested  in 
relate  of  course  to  the  order  of  the  whole,  and  not  merely 
to  "theory  of  knowledge." 

Now  Hume,  in  the  Dialogues  concerning  Natural 
Religion,  not  directly  applying  the  sceptical  results  of  his 
philosophy,  but  proceeding  on  the  commonsense  assump- 
tion that  the  external  world  is  known  to  us  as  a  collection 
of  material  objects,  set  himself  to  examine  the  customary 
arguments  for  theism  and  to  discuss  the  philosophical 
objections  to  them.  With  such  dialectical  skill  was  this 
done  that  it  remains  impossible  to  determine  from  the 
Dialogues  whether  Hume  was  in  opinion  a  Theist  or  not : 
the  drift  of  the  arguments  is  completely  sceptical.  Yet 
one  position — not  amounting  to  anything  that  can   be 


VIl]  METAPHYSICAL    CONCLUSION  115 

called  Theism  in  the  ordinary  sense — remains  as  the 
residue :  "  That  the  cause  or  causes  of  order  in  the  universe 
probably  bear  some  remote  analogy  to  human  intelligence." 
Hume  is  quite  clearly  committed  to  this,  though  he  tries, 
with  his  constant  determination  to  give  sceptical  colouring, 
to  minimise  its  importance.  And,  if  we  return  from  the 
more  popularly-written  Dialogues  to  his  radical  philo- 
sophical work,  no  less  a  residue  necessarily  remains  after 
all  the  destruction  of  dogmatisms.  For  the  external 
world  is  according  to  Hume  (here  continuing  Berkeley) 
phenomenal,  that  is,  an  appearance  for  mind;  and  if 
even  the  "spirits"  of  Berkeley  do  not  survive,  but  mind 
also  as  substance  or  unity  is  dissolved  after  corporeal 
substance  has  vanished,  the  disaggregated  fragments  that 
are  left,  being  "particular  perceptions,"  are  still  mental. 
Any  philosophy  whatever,  that  could  be  constructed  by 
starting  with  this  residue  as  a  new  beginning,  would 
therefore  necessarily  imply  a  resemblance — doubtless 
remote — of  that  which  is  ultimate  in  the  causation  of 
what  we  call  nature  to  human  intelligence. 

The  expression  is  well  known  in  which  Comte  de- 
scribed Atheism  as  "the  absurdest  of  all  theologies." 
This  has  sometimes  been  taken  for  a  mere  formal  re- 
pudiation of  an  unpopular  name  by  a  declaration  of 
agnosticism  as  against  the  profession  to  know  things 
in  their  reality.  We  know  only  phenomena,  not  their 
"causes,"  and  our  knowledge  is  "relative."  It  is  true 
that  Comte  usually  gives  the  impression  of  being  at 
bottom  sure  that  the  world  is  of  the  nature  of  an  object 
in  which,  apart  from  the  life  of  men  and  animals,  in- 
telUgence  has  no  part.  Yet,  if  we  look  closely  into  some 
few  speculative  passages,   we  find  that  the  declaration 

8—2 


116  METAPHYSICAL   CONCLUSION  [CH. 

quoted,  so  far  as  it  refers  to  mechanical  atheism,  is  much 
more  than  formal.  For  Comte's  analysis  of  mechanicism 
is  very  exact.  He  treats  it,  considered  philosophically,  as 
the  doctrine  in  which,  from  the  "hylozoism"  of  the  early 
Greek  thinkers,  the  subjective  notion  of  something  re- 
sembling Hfe  and  intelligence  in  the  material  elements  of 
the  world  has  been  eliminated.  This  hylozoism  itself  he 
regards  as  a  derivative  of  "fetishism,"  or  the  primitive 
theory  that  all  things  are  animated  by  intelhgent  wills. 
In  Comte's  view  this  is  the  earhest  of  the  "theologies," 
which  are  attempts,  prior  to  objective  science,  to  make 
a  synthesis  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  subject.  It  is 
not  only  the  earliest,  but  the  most  plausible,  and  not  the 
least  rational.  It  is  the  doctrine  by  which,  in  the  final 
stage  of  philosophy  and  religion,  poetic  imagination  will 
still  be  inspired.  And,  though  known  for  fiction,  it  will 
have  this  advantage,  that  it  is  really  a  synthesis,  though 
"subjective."  An  objective  synthesis,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  synthetic  view  of  nature  dependent  solely  on  principles 
of  science,  is  necessarily  impossible;  for  science,  to  be 
effective,  has  to  deal  with  phenomena  in  their  abstract 
aspects,  never  as  a  totahty.  Taking  this  view,  clearly  he 
was  fully  entitled  to  say  what  he  did  about  mechanical 
atheism  as  an  attempt  at  ultimate  explanation.  Hylo- 
zoism is  plausible  because  it  begins  with  the  elements  of 
both  object  and  subject.  Mechanicism,  considered  as  an 
"absolute"  doctrine,  and  not  merely  as  method  in  a 
portion  of  the  sciences,  is  devoid  of  all  plausibility  because 
it  rejects  what  is  a  part  of  every  appearance,  and  then 
tries  to  explain  the  rejected  part  by  means  of  the  rest.  In 
one  passage  Comte  goes  further,  and  definitely  asserts,  as 
any  idealist  might,   that  if  there  were  no  intelligence 


VIl]  METAPHYSICAL   CONCLUSION  117 

anywhere,  no  subject  as  distinguished  from  object,  there 
would  be  no  real  world  at  all^. 

The  basis  of  intelligence  as  known  in  our  experience 
is  life ;  hence  for  our  world  to  be  a  real  world  at  all  it  was 
necessary  that  life  should  exist.  Cosmology  and  biology 
imply  one  another.  As  a  science,  in  Comte's  view, 
biology  is  necessarily  teleological ;  and,  knowing  in  detail 
(as  many  biologists  do  not)  what  mathematico-mechanical 
explanation  means,  he  held  this  character  to  be  incapable 
of  resolution  into  anything  else.  There  is  no  possibility 
of  expressing  the  nature  of  life  in  terms  of  mechanism. 
Each  higher  science,  while  it  depends  on  the  lower, 
introduces  a  new  principle  necessitated  by  the  new 
compUcation  of  its  phenomena.  Thus,  while  physics  and 
chemistry  form  the  necessary  basis  of  the  sciences  of  life, 
the  simplest  vital  phenomenon  cannot  be  expressed  in 
purely  physico-chemical  terms.  And  this  does  not  mean 
(as  Kant  might  have  said)  that  biology  in  so  far  as  it  is 
non-mathematical  falls  short  of  being  a  true  science.  The 
immanent  purpose  of  an  organism,  the  coordinated  direc- 
tion of  its  activities  to  ends,  is  a  strictly  scientific  con- 
ception, and  must  be  held  the  permanently  distinguishing 
notion  of  biology  in  the  series  of  the  abstract  sciences^. 


^  Systerne  de  Politique  Positive,  t.  i.  p.  439:  "II  existe,  sans  doutc, 
beaucoup  d'astres  incompatibles  avec  tout  organisme,  animal  ou  meme 
vegetal,  comme  le  sont,  dans  notre  nionde,  les  corps  d^pourvus  d'atmos- 
ph^re.  Mais  notre  planfete  fut-elle,  contre  toute  vraisemblance,  la  scule 
habitee,  11  faut  bien  que  la  vie  et  la  pensee  se  developpe  au  moins  \k 
pour  concevoir  sans  contradiction  la  moindre  existence  r^elle.  En  un 
mot,  tout  ph6nomfeno  suppose  un  spectateur ;  puisqu'il  consiste  toujours 
en  une  relation  d^terrainee  entre  un  objet  et  un  sujet." 

*  Such  a  distinctively  scientific  mind  as  Claude  Bernard  is  thought 
to  have  been  influenced  by  Comte  in  the  application  of  this  idea  to 


118  METAPHYSICAL    CONCLUSION  [CH. 

This  portion  of  Comte's  doctrine  leads  further  than 
he  ever  came  to  recognise.  Fuller  consideration  would 
have  shown  that  a  "subjective  synthesis,"  such  as  that 
which  he  planned  and  partly  carried  out,  may,  if  its  free 
imaginations  are  brought  under  logical  conditions,  claim 
for  itself  truth  or  the  possibility  of  truth  and  not  mere 
permissibihty  as  poetic  fiction.  Incidentally  we  perceive 
this  when  he  points  out  that  life  does  not  emerge  in  a 
cosmos  to  which  it  is  only  accidentally  related,  but  that 
in  inorganic  phenomena  there  is  something  preparatory  of 
vital  phenomena.  "  Habit,"  for  example,  is  not  hmited  to 
living  beings^.  This  is  an  anticipation  of  the  results  of 
some  recent  researches.  The  philosophical  consequence 
seems  to  be  that  the  inorganic  itself  admits  of  no  complete 
explanation  from  the  abstract  sciences  specially  elaborated 
to  deal  with  it  as  one  aspect  of  the  world^.  For  the  facts 
brought  to  light — the  quasi-organic  character  of  some 
processes  in  inorganic  things — have  been  made  out  by 
purely  experimental  research,  not  as  the  verification  of 

physiology.  And  Littre,  averse  as  he  was  from  Comte's  later  develop- 
ments, always  continued  to  hold  that  teleology  must  be  accepted  simply 
as  the  mode  of  law  according  to  which  organic  phenomena  are  connected. 

^  Politique  Positive,  i.  pp.  606-607 :  "En  effet,  la  tendance  a  repro- 
duire  spontanement  certains  phenomenes  vitaux,  sans  le  concours  de 
leurs  sources  primitives,  est  essentiellement  analogue  a  la  disposition 
qui  fait  partout  persister  dans  un  etat  quelconque  apres  la  cessation 
de  I'impulsion  correspondante.  L'unique  difference  des  deux  proprietes 
resulte  de  la  discontinuity  des  fonctions  envers  lesquelles  la  persistance 
universelle  devient  I'habitude  specials.  Or,  cette  transformation  n'est 
point  strictement  bornee  aux  corps  vivants.  Elle  se  manifesto  aussi  en 
cosmologie,  surtout  quant  aux  phenomenes  du  son,  dans  les  appareils 
dont  Taction  s'interrompt,  et  qui  reproduisent  mieux  les  effets  assez 
reiteres." 

2  Cf.  Politique  Positive,  i.  p.  221:  "I'ensemble  est  seul  reel,  les 
parties  ne  pouvant  avoir  qu'une  existence  abstraite." 


VIl]  METAPHYSICAL   CONCLUSION  119 

any  mathematico-mechanical  formula  showing  that  they 
were  to  be  expected.  Thus  their  effect  is  not  to  suggest 
that  mechanical  explanations  will  sometime  exhaust  all 
that  there  is  in  phenomena  of  apparent  teleology,  but 
that,  for  a  grasp  of  the  whole,  teleology  must  be  carried 
back  into  the  inorganic. 

Too  preoccupied  with  human  life  to  discuss  such 
cosmical  speculations  otherwise  than  incidentally,  Comte, 
in  summing  up  the  position  as  regards  Theism,  sub- 
stantially coincides  with  Hume.  "Although  the  natural 
order  is  in  all  respects  very  imperfect,  its  production  is 
much  more  reconcilable  with  the  supposition  of  an  in- 
telligent will  than  \\ath  that  of  a  bhnd  mechanism^." 
The  difference  here  is  one  of  accent.  Comte  turns  his 
polemical  stress  against  the  dogmatic  Atheist,  Hume 
against  the  traditional  Theist. 

Thus  for  both  Hume  and  Comte  the  analogy  of  the 
world  to  a  work  of  human  art  does  not  wholly  disappear. 
For  Kant,  apart  from  a  theology  which  at  least  is  not 
for  him  demonstrable  truth,  it  remains  only  an  analogy. 
This  he  definitely  states  in  relation  to  Hume's  Dialogues 
concerning  Natural  Religion".  Nothing  is  to  be  asserted  as 
to  what  the  Highest  Reahty  is  in  itself,  but  only  in  re- 
lation to  the  World,  which  is  to  be  viewed  as  if  directed 
by  sovereign  Reason^.  It  might  therefore  be  contended 
(rather  in  the  manner  of  Hume  when  he  sets  against  one 

1  Politique  Positive,  i.  p.  48:  "Quoique  I'ordre  naturel  soit,  k  tous 
egards,  tr^s-imparfait,  sa  production  se  concilierait  beaucoup  mieux  avec 
la  supposition  d'une  volonte  intciligente  qu'avcc  celle  d'un  aveugle 
mecanisme."  It  will  be  observed  that  my  quotations  are  all  from  the 
great  work  of  Comte' s  later  period. 

2  Prolegomena,  §  58. 

3  This  is  also  the  position  of  Plotinus. 


120  METAPHYSICAL   CONCLUSION  [CH. 

another  the  positions  of  the  Theist  and  the  Atheist)  that 
all  agree:  those  thinkers  who  are  considered  friendly  to 
the  theistic  tradition  admit  that  there  is  only  an  analogy ; 
those  who  are  considered  unfriendly  admit  that  there  is 
an  analogy.  This,  however,  would  not  quite  accurately 
describe  the  real  position  of  the  question.  If,  as  I  have 
argued  in  the  first  chapter,  an  a  priori  or  transcendental 
element  (in  the  Kantian  sense)  must  be  recognised  in 
human  knowledge,  the  aspect  of  the  analogy  is  not  quite 
the  same  as  it  is  without  that  admission.  The  general 
analogy,  with  Hume  quite  indeterminate,  points  with 
Comte  to  the  kind  of  universal  sentiency  which  he  allowed 
himself  to  imagine  as  the  subject  of  poetic  fictions.  With 
a  theory  of  knowledge  modified  in  the  Kantian  direction, 
it  points  to  a  different  speculative  ontology.  This  specu- 
lative ontology  is  further  modified  when  we  allow  also  an 
a  priori  element  in  ethics.  If  these  new  elements  can  be 
included  in  the  data  from  which  we  argue,  we  are  entitled 
to  add  successively  to  Hume's  minimum  the  propositions : 
That  the  cause  or  causes  of  order  in  the  universe  probably 
bear  some  remote  analogy  to  human  reason  or  intellect;  and 
That  the  cav^e  or  causes  of  order  in  the  universe  probably 
bear  some  remote  analogy  to  human  justice.  I  will  try  to 
show  how  these  modifications  are  defensible. 

The  use  of  the  word  "cause,"  it  must  be  allowed,  is 
somewhat  inaccurate  and  popular :  what  is  meant  is  the 
ground  of  order,  the  metaphysical  reahty  on  which  the 
manifestation  of  order  depends.  Now  the  meaning  of 
the  transcendental  or  a  priori  element  in  knowledge  is 
this:  that  certain  principles,  which  cannot  be  derived 
from  mere  experience  as  we  receive  it,  are  necessary  to 
constitute  experience  as  a  coherent  system.     This  means 


VIl]  METAPHYSICAL    CONCLUSION  121 

that  the  element  of  "relation"  in  knowledge,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  its  sensible  elements,  is  as  "real"  as 
these;  that  it  is  not  a  mere  factitious  product  of  the 
shifting  of  the  (psychically)  material  elements.  Relations 
in  logic  and  mathematics  and  the  sciences  of  causation 
are  not  mere  blank  forms  left  by  the  evacuation  of  deposits 
from  without,  but  belong  to  the  mind's  own  activity. 
But  also  they  are  not  (as  might  be  inferred  from  some  of 
Kant's  own  statements)  factitiously  imposed  on  nature 
by  the  human  mind.  What  the  actual  achievements  of 
science  prove  is  that  nature  shows  itself  interpretable  by 
mind  when  mind  has  the  audacity  to  dictate  what  its 
constitution  shall  be, — provided  it  combines  with  this 
audacity  a  readiness  to  immerse  itself  in  facts  and  change 
its  hypotheses  when  they  will  not  work. 

This  view  of  knowledge  enables  us  to  proceed  to  so 
much  of  speculative  ontology  as  has  been  contended  for ; 
but  of  course  we  do  not  pretend  to  arrive  at  it  without 
one  of  those  assumptions,  called  axioms,  which  are  of  the 
very  constitution  of  knowledge.  What  we  have  to  as- 
sume is  simply  the  principle  "Nothing  from  nothing." 
It  cannot  be  without  something  corresponding  in  that 
from  which  the  mind  emerges  that  there  are  in  the  mind 
applicable  principles  of  knowledge.  The  human  mind  as 
it  exists  is  obviously  in  some  sense  a  product  of  a  larger 
whole;  hence  the  principles  by  which  it  successfully 
interprets  that  whole  must  be  in  some  way  prefigured  in 
the  reahty  of  the  whole. 

Clearly  this  is  just  as  true  for  the  principles  of  morals 
as  of  theoretical  science.  Doubtless,  as  was  said,  if  we 
had  no  ethical  interests  we  should  not  ask  why  there  are 
principles  of  morals;    but  since  we  are,  as  a  matter  of 


122  METAPHYSICAL   CONCLUSION  [CH. 

fact,  moral  beings,  the  bearing  of  those  principles  on  the 
nature  of  the  whole  is  a  speculative  question  that  neces- 
sarily presents  itself.  Thus  our  result,  if  vahd  at  all,  will 
be  theoretically  vahd.  A  metaphysical  doctrine  that  is 
the  response  to  moral  questioning  is  not  of  the  nature  of 
a  decision  for  the  sake  of  practice,  but  is  the  completion 
of  a  speculative  ontology  by  means  of  elements  pro- 
visionally abstracted  from  when  the  human  mind  was 
regarded  merely  as  constructing  a  science  of  nature. 

Man,  as  we  have  seen,  also  constructs  a  science  of 
ethics,  or  of  what  ought  to  be.  In  constructing  it,  he 
has  passed  historically  to  a  higher  degree  of  abstraction. 
Concrete  ethics,  or  the  art  of  life  in  so  far  as  it  is  worked 
out  in  view  of  the  hmiting  conditions  imposed  by  morahty 
proper,  we  found,  is  related  to  abstract  ethics,  or  the 
science  of  the  limiting  conditions  themselves,  as  the 
geometry  of  antiquity  to  modern  analytical  geometry. 
Here  we  were  able  to  apply  the  strict  notion  of  analogy 
in  Kant's  sense :  the  things  themselves  are  not  alike,  but 
there  is  a  resemblance  of  relations.  This  resemblance  of 
relations  depends  on  the  existence  of  an  a  priori  element 
in  morahty  capable  of  development  to  purer  detachment, 
but  always  present  in  the  human  mind  since  it  began  to 
reflect  on  conduct  as  consisting  in  interactions  among 
social  beings. 

This  notion  of  abstract  ethics  impressed  itself  very 
strongly  on  Schopenhauer;  who  was  certainly  not  too 
desirous  of  agreeing  with  Kant,  and  who,  by  natural  bias, 
was  inchned  to  look  to  the  end  and  the  concrete  case 
rather  than  to  bring  conduct  under  a  system  of  general 
laws.  Through  the  recognised  necessity  of  admitting  an 
a  priori  element  in  morahty,  he  was  led  to  formulate  his 


VIl]  METAPHYSICAL    CONCLUSION  123 

metaphysical  doctrine  of  "eternal  justice."  It  is  true 
that  the  earher  expression  he  gives  to  this,  involving  the 
ultimate  illusiveness  of  the  individual,  does  not  answer 
any  demand  ever  made  by  men  for  justice  in  the  universe : 
the  important  thing  was  that  the  demand  should  be 
recognised,  even  in  an  ostensibly  pessimistic  system,  as 
needing  a  response.  Aiming  at  no  more  than  the  state- 
ment of  an  analogy,  I  am  content  at  present  with  this 
support  for  the  general  argument.  I  simply  argue  that 
the  existence  of  inexpugnable  a  priori  elements  in  moral 
as  in  natural  science  entitles  us  to  assert,  since  nothing 
comes  from  nothing,  that  not  only  Reason  but  Justice  in 
some  sense  is  a  pre-existent  reahty  ordering  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  whole  that  is  partly  known  to  us  in  the  world 
and  in  man. 

We  cannot,  on  the  ground  of  this  argument,  straight- 
way identify  Reason  and  Justice  with  the  Whole  of 
Reahty,  or  the  Absolute.  The  position  indicated  is  the 
Platonic  position,  in  some  generalised  sense,  that  "Mind 
is  King."  From  this  we  must  not  infer  the  personahty 
of  that  which  directs  the  process  of  the  world;  but, 
personahsed  or  not,  it  is  this,  rather  than  the  Absolute, 
when  we  come  to  consider  it  closely  and  not  vaguely, 
that  corresponds  to  the  theological  idea  of  God. 

To  trace  out  the  realisation  of  the  order  of  reason  and 
justice  in  the  world,  a  modern  mind  will  look  first  to  its 
evolution,  physical  and  organic,  and  then  to  the  historical 
evolution  of  man.  But,  if  we  are  to  take  the  idea  of 
Eternal  Justice  seriously,  these,  singly  or  together,  are 
insufficient.  For  eternal  justice  to  have  a  meaning,  we 
must  affirm  what  Schopenhauer  called  the  aseitas  of  the 
individual,  and  consider  the  destiny  of  this.     It  would  be 


124  METAPHYSICAL   CONCLUSION        [CH.  Vn 

unjust,  as  he  insists,  if  the  Destiny  that  judges  had  first 
created  by  its  will  that  which  it  is  to  judge.  Nor  is  each 
individual  to  be  considered,  as  sometimes  from  the  point 
of  view  of  biological  and  sociological  science,  simply  as 
an  organ  through  which  all  the  rest  of  the  world  acts  and 
which  is  nothing  in  itself.  It  is  not  a  mere  complex  of 
hereditary  and  socially-impressed  tendencies,  though 
these  contribute  to  make  it  empirically  what  it  is ;  it 
includes  something — ^that  which  has  not  proceeded  from 
anything  else^without  which  the  whole  world  would  be 
different.  And  perhaps  this  imphes  (what  I  think 
Schopenhauer  does  not  say)  that  some  individuals  are 
radically  evil.  This  is  conjectured  to  be  the  meaning  of 
a  well-known  but  obscure  passage  in  Plato's  Laws^. 
Being  thus  led  to  carry  forward  our  speculations  to  the 
individual,  there  is  no  reason,  so  long  as  we  can  put  our 
questions  in  intelligible  terms,  why  we  should  cease  to 
ask  them.  In  the  hope  of  a  possible  answer  we  may  be 
led  to  consider  again  whether  any  insight  is  still  to  be 
found  in  those  Greek  and  Indian  theodicies  which  suppose 
permanent  individualities  with  lives  recurrent  in  suc- 
cessive ages  of  the  world.  The  conditions  of  attempting 
any  new  construction  with  such  help  seem  to  me  to  be 
a  certain  freedom  of  imaginative  conjecture  together  with 
a  constant  willingness  to  bring  our  imaginations  into 
relation  with  every  kind  of  demonstrated  science.  But 
this  lies  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  present  Essay. 

^  X.  896  E,  with  context.  What  Plato  says  directly  is  that  some  (at 
least  one)  soul  in  the  universe  must  be  potentially  maleficent,  and  that 
this  cannot  be  the  soul  that  guides  the  whole.  I  derive  the  interpre- 
tation from  Professor  Burnet. 


INDEX 


Aeschylus,  30 

Alexander  the  Great,  46 

Altruism,  32,  50,  51  etc. 

Animals,  rights  of,  110-112 

Antigone,  30,  64 

A  priori,  5  etc. 

Aristotle,  19,  25,  31,  46  n.,  65,  98, 

99 
"Art  for  art,"  101-102 
Aseitas,  123 
Attic  drama,  48 

Bacon,  Francis,  3,  4,  34 

Bacon,  Roger,  34 

Bentham,  J.,  23,  28 

Berkeley,  3,  5,  12,  13  ff.,  55,  115 

Bernard,  CI.,  117  n. 

Bismarck,  107  n. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  101 

Burnet,  J.,  124  n. 

CaUicles,  74 

Cantor,  G.,  17  n. 

Carlyle,  100 

Casuistry,  36 

Catecjorical  Imperative,  58,  59,  77 

Chivah-y,  99 

Clarke,  Samuel,  54 

Comte,  3,  5,  25;   altruism,  32-36; 

64,  70,  92,  93,  95,  99  n.,  112; 

on  Theology  and  Final  Causes, 

ch.  vn 
Conscience,  56,  69  n. 
Contradiction,  law  of,  7-8,  60 
Creon,   30;    and   Prussian   State, 

64  n. 
Cud  worth,  51-55 
Culture,  as  end,  85-86 

Dante,  62,  100 
Democritus,  14 
De  Morgan,  A.,  16 
Descartes,  compared  with  Bacon, 
4 ;  his  rationalism,  4^5 ;  critical 


point  of  view,  12, 41 ;  geometry, 
40;    on  Hobbes,  41 

Education,  moral,  93 
Efficiency,  98-99 
End,  ethical,  26  etc.,  and  law,  112 
Epicurus,  24,  91 
Experientialism,  3,  11  etc. 

Fate,  112  n. 

Ferguson,  W.  Scott,  46  n. 

Francis,  St,  59 

Galileo,  17  n. 
Gibbon,  60 

Happiness,  23,  64  n.,  66,  69 
"Hedonical  calculus,"  24,  63 
Hedonism,  22  ff. ;  egoistic,  87 
Hegel,    13;     criticism    of   Kant's 

ethics,  63-65 
Hobbes,   3;    founder  of  abstract 
ethics,    40-50;     opposition    to, 
50-55;    absolutism,  74;    92  n.; 
egoistic  basis,  94 
Hugo,  v.,  61  n. 
Humanity,  Religion  of,  70 
Hume,  3,  5,  9,  10,  12,  13;    ought 
and   is,    19;     benevolent   utili- 
tarianism, 56;    80  n.;    relation 
to  Theism,  ch.  vn 
Hylozoism,  116 

"Immoralism,"  53,  107 
Imperialism,  46 
Infinite,  mathematical,  16-18 
"Innate  ideas,"  4-5 
Inquisition,  104-105 
Intuitionism,  56,  66  n. 
Isocrates,  49,  60 

Justice,  in  ancient  and  modem 
ethics,  31 ;  liberty  and,  83  ff. ; 
eternal,  105,  112  n.,  123 


126 


INDEX 


Juvalta,  E.,  59,  65;  exposition  of 
his  ethics,  ch.  v;  90,  91,  92,  94, 
102,  111 

Kant,  1,  5,  7;  categories,  9-11; 
idealism,  11-12,  15  n. ;  Prac- 
tical Reason,  19-20,57,  113;  39, 
51,55,56;  ethical  system,  57  ff., 
66;  Juvalta's  criticism  of  his 
ethical  system,  76-79;  81,  92, 
97  n.,  101,  102;  on  inter- 
national law,  105-110;  on 
rights  of  animals,  1 10-1 11;  on 
love  and  justice,  112;  relation 
to  Theism,  ch.  vn 

Law,  ethics  in  form  of,  29  etc. ; 
customary,  46 ;  international, 
60  n.,  102  n.,  104,  105-110 

Leibniz,  4,  5 

Liberty,  and  justice,  83  ff. 

Littre,  E.,  118  n. 

Locke,  3-5;  Descartes  and,  12; 
and  Berkeley,  13;  on  Tolera- 
tion, 103 

Logic,  Formal,  4,  5  ff. 

Love,  spring  of  social  action,  35 

Lucretius,  91 

Machiavelli,  100,  107  n, 

Maistre,  J.  de,  104 

Mill,  J.  S.,  3,  5,  69,  92,  93,  103,  104 

MUton,  29,  103 

Moore,  G.  E.,  20  ff.,  31,  80,  97 

Moses,  49 

"Natural    law,"     Hobbes's    con- 
ception of,  43 
Neo-Platonists,  55,  92 
Nietzsche,  F.,  71 

Ontology,  12-13,  18,  120-122 

Pain,  paradox  on,  24 

Peace,  Kant's  perpetual,  107-109 

Perfection  as  end,  64  n. 

Plato,  22,  24,  52,  55,  95,  96,  103, 

104,  123,  124 
Platonism,  12-13,  20,  68 


Platonists,  Cambridge,  53,  54 
Plotinus,  119  n. 
Positivism,  111 
Protagoras,  55 
Pythagoreanism,  111 

Rationalism,  philosophical,  2  etc. 

Read,  C,  19,  25 

Reciprocity,  law  of,  48-49,  60 

Reinach,  S.,  105  n. 

Rehgion,  Hobbes's  view  of,  44; 
and  ethics,  69-70;  and  poli- 
tics, 88-89;  and  ethical  ends, 
91 

Renouvier,  Ch.,  on  mathematical 
infinite,  16-17 ;  Kantian  ethics, 
93-95 

Robertson,  G.  C,  7;  on  Hobbes, 
49-50 

RusseU,  B.,  5-8,  13,  16-18 

Sacrifice,  84 

"Sanctions,"  48,  73 

Schopenhauer,  12,  13,  122-124 

"Self-love,"  35 

"Self-reahsation,"  63 

Socialism,  75,  86 

"SoUpsism,"  15 

Sophocles,  30,  64 

Sorley,  W.  R.,  23  n. 

Spencer,  H.,  3,  5,  71,  92 

Spinoza,  4,  25 ;  Hobbes  and,  49  n., 
50  n.;  92;  on  "liberty  of 
philosophising,"  103-105;  on 
international  law,  106-108 

Stoicism,  20,  39,  81  n.,  92,  110 

Teleology,  117-119 
"Thmg-in-itself,"  12-13 
"Transcendental,"    5;     idealism, 
12;   element  in  knowledge,  120 

Utihtarianism,  27,  35,  59  etc. 

Vocation,  individual,  101 

War,  primitive  state  of,  42 ;  modi- 
fies practicable  ethics,  99; 
aggressive,     109-1 10 


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